User talk:Dbachmann/Archive 43

I do not think that a flame war is encyclopedic material (maybe The_Jerry_Springer_Show The Jerry Springer Show material). I am familiar with the history of the Y chromosome research; however my comment was based on the way Elhaik interacts with scientists in general. Please, see this, end of the abstract here, and the posts here and here. I try not to read intentions in scientific hypotheses (like the mutation rate), but Elhaik’s approach in general strikes me as somewhat unreliable.

I agree that the title "Sex with other human species might have been the secret of Homo sapiens’s [sic] success" is extremely weird. However, it is the title of a totally different piece, which only shares one of the authors of Mendez et al. 2013 It is my understanding that the point estimate cited by Elhaik et al. 2014 (not the confidence intervals) is also present in Mendez et al. 2013. Please, correct me if I am misinterpreting the figure and caption. The estimate of mutation rate of Mendez et al. 2013 is the lowest that I have seen so far in the literature, but the estimates in Francalacci et al. 2013 and Scozzari et al. 2014 are very close. By the way, Scozzari et al. 2014 is a very important paper and I think it should be included both in the pages for the haplogroup A and the Y chromosomal Adam. Please, take a look at that paper, and tell me what you think.

Maybe there could be a specific section on the mutation rate for the human Y chromosome where different estimates are indicated. If there was also an ID of which node of the tree was being considered as Y-MRCA in each of the papers that estimate its age, the article would be much clearer. Cordially,

67.180.239.103 07:49, 27 January 2015‎ (UTC)

Thank you, I will look into this. I agree of course that we can cite any scholarly publication, each in relation to others on the same topic, but if it should get too involved, we will need to do this at a standalone Haplogroup A00 article (this is surely the best solution, but it means investing the work necessary to build a new article from scratch).

The interesting thing for me was that a new clade "A00" has apparently been found. This does not seem to be under dispute. The "very ancient" date is a WP:REDFLAG, it can by all means be cited, but not as established fact and with the relevant caveats. It is plausible that the divergence would date to roughly 200kya, so this is the unsurprising result, but of course I don't pretend to know the "true" age any more than anyone else. It is unfortunate that the unduly confident publication of an "extremely ancient" date seems to have poisoned the well now, but we'll just have to deal with the situation as it is.

All our Y-haplogroup articles are in disarray, and they are typically far too confident when citing time depths. The most important thing is to impress on the reader that these are estimates with up to 50% uncertainty. It is unreasonable to cite time estimates to the accuracy of a millennium that are just the center of a wide 95% confidence interval (either round to a single significant digit or cite the interval explicitly).

The mutation rate discussion should probably go to the main Y-haplogroup page.

Regards, --dab (𒁳) 14:32, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

I took a look at the arxiv piece by Elhaik and colleagues. The language seemed pretty strong, and quite accusatory, so I decided to do look at it somewhat carefully. This is what I found:

“Their rebuttal consist mainly of hypotheses that are irrefutable and, hence, unscientific, and they mostly ignore the main issues of our critique.” They do not say which statements in the rebuttal are hypotheses, why they would be irrefutable, and what issues are ignored. They just state it without providing any support.

“Mendez et al. (2014) claim that the time to the most common recent ancestor (TMRCA) for some human loci may exceed 1 million years. This may be true for “some human loci,” even some loci on the Y chromosome, however, this claim has nothing to do with the dating in question.”

Some loci on the Y chromosome??!! Except for the pseudoautosomal regions there is a single genealogy for the Y_chromosome#Human_Y_chromosome Y chromosome, so it is all or none.

“We have no qualms with claims of antiquity for this or that locus, as long as they are not used to promote headlines such as “Sex with other human species might have been secret of Homo sapiens’s [sic] success” (Hammer 2013).”

I looked for two things: 1) whether the expression “Homo sapiens’s” is plain incorrect. A Google search for “homo sapiens’s”, including the quotation marks, a few thousands of hits that predate the article by Hammer. As it turns out, this is irrelevant (see below), and 2) how the two articles,Mendez et al. 2013 and Hammer 2013, were related . I could find a version in the Scientific American website for Hammer 2013: Now, in page 5, towards the end it indicates: ‘This article was originally published with the title "Human Hybrids."’ So, the title that Elhaik et al. mention is not even the original one!! I do not see how Mendez et al. 2013 was being used to promote a headline that was not even close to the original title. I think I could find out how the weird title came to be, but I am not that interested to spend my time on that. The article by Mendez et al. 2013 does get cited in the Scientific American piece. The article states “my team determined that his sequence represents a previously unknown Y chromosome lineage that branched off the Y chromosome tree more than 300,000 years ago”, a dating that sounds too confident to my taste. However, it also says “the last common ancestor of all modern Y chromosome variants is 70 percent older than previously thought”, which I could trace back in Mendez et al. to the following “Regardless of which mutation rate is applied, the analysis of relative ages of nodes shows that the TMRCA of the A00-rooted tree is 67% older (95% CI 35%–126%) than that of the A0-rooted tree.”

NOTE: I think that is probably the main result in what respects to the age. For the Wikipedia page, it would make sense to round it to 50% (instead of 67%).

Continuing with the arxiv part: “The only thing we were concerned with in Elhaik et al. (2014) was the dating of a Y chromosomal haplotype called A00.” So, either they cared about Hammer 2013 (as they stated in the second sentence of the Preface) or they didn’t (as they say here). This is very confusing...

“In selecting values for d, r, n, l, and tg, Mendez et al. (2013) consistently and without exception chose values that led to overestimating the time of divergence. For each of these variables, Mendez et al. (2013) could have chosen from a wide range of values. However, having the conclusion of great antiquity firmly planted in their mind, they unfailingly selected values that would inflate the time of divergence estimate.”

OK, this was more tedious to check. To begin, the values of d, r, n, l, and tg are not all independent. They just showed an equation that relates n, d and l . Their statement does not even pass the smell test!! I then looked at all, but d.

They say something about the length (l) of sequence being compared, but according to the reply by Mendez et al. 2014, when Elhaik use the same amount of sequences from both lineages they find essentially the same age as when using the full data.

There is also the number of differences between the sequences (n). Wait a second, … did they show that there mutations that are not real? How could Mendez et al. choose anything here? How would they know? What is their basis to state that Mendez et al. (2013) chose the value of n??!!

Then, there is the generation time. They say that in some way it combines with the mutation rate. “ r is often derived from data on number of substitutions per generation. r can, thus, be overestimated by assuming that the generation time, tg, is larger than it really is. ” This is really confusing… Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Anyways, Mendez et al. 2014 say “The point estimate is based on an average of 30 years, which is the same value used in Xue et al”. I went back to Mendez et al. 2013, and it says “To obtain point estimates of the ages of nodes in Figure 1, we used the median value of mY at age 30 years (6.17 *10^-10).”

Then, there is the actual mutation rate. I sat with the equation in Mendez et al. 2013 for a while, and it was not entirely clear to me how it comes to be. However, the fact that Scozzari et al. 2014 found a very similar value using essentially the same kind of data and approach, suggested to me that it is probably not too far off. The assumptions may be problematic, so I wondered why Mendez et al. did not use the estimate from Xue et al. I looked online , and think that a likely cause is that the confidence intervals are quite broad.

The last thing is the “having the conclusion of great antiquity firmly planted in their mind”. As a general rule, I tend to distrust people that portrait themselves as mind readers.

At this point, I was getting tired, so I jumped further to the paragraph with bold text. “The most egregious accusation in Mendez et al. (2014) is one of “fabrication.” In support of this claim, they took the unprecedented step of publishing exchanges of emails between Fernando Mendez and Eran Elhaik without prior approval or permission.” I wondered why would Mendez et al. do that. I looked and found in Mendez et al. 2014 “However, we do wish to point out that the supposed quotation, cited as personal communication FLM, was entirely fabricated, and we include the full set of email correspondence between FL Mendez and E Elhaik as a supplementary file.” Apparently, there is a dispute over a quote. I would look for it, but at this point I do not expect to find it.

To summarize the result of this exercise:

1) The choice of mutation rate is still problematic

2) Elhaik et al. contradict themselves a few times, portrait themselves as mind readers, and provide false statements, and all that in only 4 pages.

3) It would be quite tedious to follow all ideas in the two Mendez et al. and the two Elhaik et al., but after my exercise, I am even more convinced that Elhaik’s work is unreliable.

As you, I think that “extremely ancient” is somewhat of an exaggeration, and clearly not a good word choice. However, I disagree with you when you say “It seems to me to have been established beyond reasonable doubt that the "237-581 kya" range was just sensationalist.” I rather think that most likely Elhaik et al. 2013 was purely sensationalist.

I plan to do some edits based on these thoughts, but we can discuss those further.

Regards,

67.180.239.103 09:32, 31 January 2015‎ (UTC)

part of your comments are perfectly sensible -- so no offence, but as another part of your comments strongly suggests prior involvement, I am disposed to assume that you are one of the authors of the Mendez 2013 paper. If you are, please state clearly that you are (you can still edit, but it is considered a show of good faith to state your involvement), and if you are not, may I ask you to clearly state you are not? Like this: I, Dbachmann, have no professional involvement whatsoever in anything remotely related to Y-DNA research.

also, if you intend to pursue this, perhaps may I invite you to get an account? It will make communication more coherent, and it protects your privacy (you can choose any old username, but your IPs show at least where you are at any given moment (California).

the Elhaik preprint is snarky by design, and they published it after a series of events which they considered in bad style, and they completely disclose the series of events that led to the situation. Your characterisation of this as "contradict themselves a few times, portra[y] themselves as mind readers, and provide false statements" is clearly disingenious.

However, I have not the slightest interest in this boring Mendez-Elhaik flame war. My only interest was the discovery of A00. If Mendez hadn't gone over board with a hyper-early dating, Elhaik wouldn't have felt the need to mock it, and the entire flame war would not have taken place. I have no interest in establishing which party behaved with less decorum, I was just interested in covering the A00 thing. Therefore I have no interest in smearing Mendez, I just couldn't bring myself to report their age estimate with a straight face, so I was forced to cite Elhaik. That's the full extent of my interest or involvement in this.

If I know anything about Wikipedia, it's not worth trying to sort this out now, because it would take longer than until a third uninvolved study of the A00 age. I will happily just have the two date estimates stand alongside one another until such a third study is published (which isn't going to be more than 1-2 years at the most I suppose). --dab (𒁳) 16:43, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi, you indefinitely semi-protected Sanskrit in 2008 due to anon revert-warring. Is this still needed or could it be removed now? ♣ Ameliorate! 10:50, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

As it appears no one could be bothered to mention this to you, the Crab Nebula article is currently up for FAR ::rollseyes:: as a result of a single edit you made two years ago The edit involves the addition of the text "but its identification using Chinese observations from 1181 is sometimes contested." So, in order to save the original FA nom much heartache, can you provide a ref for that, or alternately, just remove the statement? Maury Markowitz (talk) 20:46, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Ignore me, the required cite was a single click away. All fixed. Maury Markowitz (talk) 22:06, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Dbachmann. I am Piotr Konieczny (User:Piotrus), you may know me as an active content creator (see my userpage), but I am also a professional researcher of Wikipedia. Recently I published a paper (downloadable here) on reasons editors participated in Wikipedia's biggest vote to date (January 2012 WP:SOPA). I am now developing a supplementary paper, which analyzes why many editors did not take part in that vote. Which is where you come in :) You are a highly active Wikipedian (72nd to be exact), and you were active back during the January 2012 discussion/voting for the SOPA, yet you did not chose to participate in said vote. I'd appreciate it if you could tell me why was that so? For your convenience, I prepared a short survey at meta, which should not take more than a minute of your time. I would dearly appreciate you taking this minute; not only as a Wikipedia researcher but as a fellow content creator and concerned member of the community (I believe your answers may help us eventually improve our policies and thus, the project's governance). PS. If you chose to reply here (on your userpage), please WP:ECHO me. Thank you! --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 23:28, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Is it possible that the articles on the Gothic chiefs Odotheus and Alatheus might refer to the same person? Krakkos (talk) 01:10, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Seems plausible, or at least possible? It's a (mildly) interesting problem for the purposes of Wikipedia what to do with records of what may be either one single or two separate people. In Bhartṛhari we conflated it into a single page. It may make sense to do the same here. --dab (𒁳) 08:03, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

I just looked into it for a few minutes, and it seems to me that in this case, there is a rather clear consensus that this is a single person; and I did not see anyone explicitly stating that they disagree. It's a clear merge candidate. --dab (𒁳) 08:18, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Okay, I've now merged Odotheus into the Alatheus article as the name Alatheus is more commonly used in literature (probably because of it's association with the Battle of Adrianople. On a side note, given your appearant interest in the wide range on wikipedian historical articles, i'm sure you've had the misfortune of encountering User:Tirgil34 and his socks. I've recently made an effort to clean up his mess at Wusun, but this has been obstructed by a ducky IP. If you're a German-speaker the edits of the de:Benutzer:Tsaigankuk might of interest. User:Tsaigankuk is proven sock of Tirgil34 and many of his WP:Fringe edits still still stand on the German wiki. Krakkos (talk) 12:58, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi there. We are keen to feature the Karte Pomponius Mela in the launch issue of a new magazine in the UK. Do you have it in a bigger size/ higher res? It needs to be at least 353mm wide and 300dpi.

Please email me on ekb2504@gmail.com.

Thank you so much,

Emily EKB2504 (talk) 18:00, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Assuming you mean this file, File:Karte Pomponius Mela.jpg, I don't know why you are asking me, as I didn't upload the file. You want to reprint the map at approximately the same size as it was in the original publication. This is going to be difficult unless you get hold of a well-preserved copy of the original book. Here is a digitisation of that publication, but the Mela map (table 7) seems to be missing. --dab (𒁳) 13:26, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Krakkos (talk) 11:55, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Good work there but I've avoided using ESOP, including Tompsen's paper, because it is basically a fringe publication - one suggestion made to me is that ESOP wanted Tompsen's paper simply to rebut it. I'm waiting for an interlibrary loan book to help with at least the Shawnee runestone. Dougweller (talk) 12:52, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

well, since this isn't a scholarly topic per se, we have to use the best sources available relative to the topic's notability. In my book this stuff is next to unnotable, but of course it can still be on Wikipedia, it just makes sense to adopt the grouping "Oklahoma runestones" that is also used by Tompsen. No, I do not think the Tompsen paper has academic quality. But it's ok relative to the topic notability.

I suppose this is a bona fide topic of local history and folklore, much like the Hamlet's Grave thing I just enjoyed researching (a local pharmacist discovering Hamlet's tomb in 1932, and in 1933 the local tourist board puts up a ten ton granite monument). --dab (𒁳) 13:05, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Dear Mr. Bachmann,

whats the source for your map File:IE expansion.png?--Kopiersperre (talk) 09:05, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

please read the image's talkpage. --dab (𒁳) 08:43, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Dbachmann.
You may want to take a quick look at your edit here. This results in

"The Dingling ... were an ancient people appearing Chinese historiography in the context of the 1st century BCE. "

Something is missing there, maybe just "in" before "historiography"? 220 of ^Borg 02:45, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

I think that's what I meant, sorry. --dab (𒁳) 08:41, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Nah, no worries. reads better now. 220 of ^Borg 08:52, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Nsw-bity. Since you had some involvement with the Nsw-bity redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:48, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Just wanted to say it's relieving to see you're still chiseling away here. Happy Früelig! ---Sluzzelin talk 01:26, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

au dir en schöne Früelig! --dab (𒁳) 18:05, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Did you intend 88 and mistype 87 here? I have changed it on that assumption. – Fayenatic London 07:28, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

yes, thank you. --dab (𒁳) 08:00, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

On further inspection, some authorities do cite it as 87, so your edit was fine. I have added a citation at the target. – Fayenatic London 09:54, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Template:Kurds infobox has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Primefac (talk) 13:24, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi. :) iThenticate detected duplicated text between Modern runic writing and a couple of external sites that seem to have pulled text from Runes. It looks like you might have started the article by splitting. Are you the sole author of that content you copied? If not, of course, it needs to be attributed it in compliance with our license. Steps for that are set out at Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. If you are, of course (and I know this is an area of interest for you), that's not needed. If you could let me know, I'd be happy to mark the iThenticate report as resolved. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:15, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Okay, since you haven't had the time to respond, I've had a further look myself, and it seems that you are not the sole author of this content. For instance, I see in this edit building of the content on Tolkien, which was initially added by another user here.

To comply with copyright, content that is taken from one space on a Wikimedia project to another must have attribution. This content is not public domain, but liberally licensed for reuse. The base requirement of copying over such text is attribution in the edit summary, which preserves the mandatory link to the source article in the article's history. Guideline also recommends the use of a note on the talk page, which is easily accomplished by a template like {{copied}}.

Is this the only article from which you copied content into Modern runic writing? Have you copied content into other articles? It's a bit of a priority to fix, since it's a copyright issue. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:27, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

sorry, I only saw this just now. You are right, I should have said "imported from Runes" or something when I split the article. Although most of the content was indeed mine, and I wouldn't be caught dead plagiarizing "content" like the In the famous J.R.R Tolkien's novels, such as The Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings series he uses runes to interpret the writings on the maps of your diff. --dab (𒁳) 19:49, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, yes, that's required and still must be done. :) The procedure is described at Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia - essentially, you need to make a null edit to record the attribution for any articles you've copied from in an edit summary and put a note on the talk page acknowledging the split. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 23:18, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I see you did the talk page note. So that's done, but the edit summary must still happen. :) Per GFDL, we are required to retain attribution within it. CC-By-SA also requires that we give credit in the same prominence, so the edit history is needed for this. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 23:20, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

I am glad some attention is being paid to this now, and I have seen this kind of unattributed duplication happen to my own contributions many times over the years. But realistically, if you consider the Wikipedia database as a whole, surely you must realise what you are up against? People have been doing this with impunity for literally a decade, over what by now amounts to millions of pages. If we are serious about this, surely some concerted, scientific approach will be needed. --dab (𒁳) 07:13, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

We have several methods for detecting these, from CorenSearchBot and MadmanBot to the new EranBot. The latter is showing great promise. We systematize cleanup of these by creating contributor copyright investigations when necessary to make sure that attribution is added retroactively. Unfortunately, there's a shortage of manpower in the area, but efforts have been systematized for years. As it becomes easier to detect them more quickly, it should help. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 10:54, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I see that attribution is still not in an edit summary so that the attribution in history is correct. Please don't forget that. The article remains a copyright problem until it's done. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 10:57, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a web search with the contents of Christian cross variants, and it appears to include material copied directly from https://www.flickr.com/photos/lgdberg/6874293644/.

It is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article. The article will be reviewed to determine if there are any copyright issues.

If substantial content is duplicated and it is not public domain or available under a compatible license, it will be deleted. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material. You may use such publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. See our copyright policy for further details. (If you own the copyright to the previously published content and wish to donate it, see Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for the procedure.) CorenSearchBot (talk) 14:29, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

not again. Can we program these bots not to lose it every time somebody steals content from Wikipedia? --dab (𒁳) 14:43, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Fusion–fission hybrid reactor. Since you had some involvement with the Fusion–fission hybrid reactor redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Maury Markowitz (talk) 11:21, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

An article that you have been involved in editing, Other Black , has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. Cordless Larry (talk) 20:12, 23 April 2015 (UTC) Cordless Larry (talk) 20:12, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't know whether you have Jimbo's talk page on your watchlist, or whether this even interests you, but you're someone I thought of while reading User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Stable_Wikipedia.3F. ---Sluzzelin talk 21:30, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

you are right, I feel the same frustration about quality deterioration, but I decided some time ago to let this go in the interest of my sanity and peace of mind and chisel away (as you rightly called it) at researching obscure facts instead of carrying the burden of worrying about Wikipedia as a whole. I have not looked at my watchlist in years. Most of the stuff I place on Wikipedia I put there for future reference for my own use, and if I dimly remember putting something in an article, I can always recover it from the edit history even if in the meantime the article was mangled by trolls or idiots. --dab (𒁳) 11:07, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Actually, that's a great response. Have never thought of it or seen it that way. Amazing synergy, thanks! ---Sluzzelin talk 19:56, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Hiho :) Eben rauschte diese Änderung auf meiner Beobachtungsliste an mir vorbei: Ist soweit natürlich OK! Nur: „fl." dürfte eine den allermeisten Lesern wohl nicht unmittelbar verständliche Abkürzung sein (vermutlich sogar gänzlich unbekannte). Irgendeine Idee wie man das laienkompatibler hinkriegt? Ich würde auf den Klammerzusatz übrigens ganz verzichten und das „(fl. um 1270)" ganz schlicht in einen (Halb-)Satz gut verständlicher Prosa auflösen :) Was meinst Du? Gruß aus der de.WP ;) --Henriette (talk) 12:27, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

würde ich auch machen, die Schätzung "fl." ist genau dieselbe wie "um 1260-75" für den Jüngeren Titurel (d.h. das einzige, was man über den Autor weiss, ist, dass er in der Zeit produktiv gewesen sein muss, in der er sein Werk produzierte :)

Noch besser wäre es wohl, den Artikel explizit dem Werk statt dem Autor (von dem man nichts hat ausser eben dieses Werk) zu widmen. --dab (𒁳) 16:12, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Oh, das ist eine gute Idee! :) Vom Autor kann man dann ja entspannt einen Redirect zum Werk legen und in den Werkartikel einen kleinen Absatz zum Autor einbauen. Sehr gut, gefällt! Ich filze die Tage mal meine altgermanistische Fachliteratur (gut möglich, daß ich sogar eine Kopie des passenden VL-Artikels habe) und bastele das um. Danke Dir sehr!! :) --Henriette (talk) 16:58, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Tenth Crusade . Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 15:31, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

hi, in this edit you removed another stadion that shares the same name, was this by mistake? Darkstar1st (talk) 15:04, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

stadion is just the word for stadium in many languages. My rationale is that if something is known as "Something something Stadion" (in this case: Puskás Ferenc Stadion), it does not qualify for disambiguation for "things also known as Stadion"). But I don't really care. --dab (𒁳) 17:01, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

I thought your analysis of this as being unsupported was correct, so I have quoted your analysis in my deletion nomination at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mop wedding. I also could not find a mention of mop weddings, or even mop fairs, in those two available sources. Fences&Windows 21:02, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

thank you -- well done us. --dab (𒁳) 05:11, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Please explain why you are changing the grouping in List of calendars on that article's talk page. I've already started a section to discuss this. Karl (talk) 12:14, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

based on WP:TNT. I am trying to turn it into something useful (an unabelled list has worth zero, as it is equivalent to a category link). Ideally, this should become a referenced multi-column list. --dab (𒁳) 13:24, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Dbachmann. I recently discovered that the article Uysyn is largely copied from a suspicious website. As you've been dealing with adherents of this website on various articles for several years, your input at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Uysyn could be helpful. Krakkos (talk) 21:58, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Dbachmann, could you please expand the article about your compatriot? --217.118.86.101 (talk) 07:19, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

you are welcome. --dab (𒁳) 11:26, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the good work. --217.118.86.101 (talk) 06:58, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

It would b preferable and more convenient to split British India in a disambiguation page, one linking to the British Raj and another to Presidencies and provinces of British India. I know both pages are linked on each other, but this would still be more convenient for the readers and easier for readers to find what they're looking for. Please consider it. Regards — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.159.60.247 (talk) 01:42, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

I see your point, and I think there was a drawn-out discussion about this at some point. The thing is that "British India" often, but not exclusively refers to the "British Raj". But "British India" is too common a term, and will be frequently linked to, to make it a disambiguation page. I see how the current state can be seen as unintuitive, I am just saying some thought did go into it and you should think twice, and then seek further input, before you just switch things around. --dab (𒁳) 11:28, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

• While we're discussing it, I don't think the demographics section of the British Raj is helpful. It covers really India and not other regions part of the British Raj including Eastern Afghanistan. I think a new article called Demographics of the British Raj is required.--69.159.60.247 (talk) 06:22, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Well, do it. Keeping in mind, of course, that "India" pre-1947 was not coterminous with the territory of what is now the Republic of India, "India" included Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal at least, but arguably also (parts of) Afghanistan and Burma. --dab (𒁳) 11:21, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

. Hi, Dab, long time no see. I see you're still at it, you POV-pusher you.. --Folantin (talk) 10:34, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

you caught me bothering about something I should long have learned not to bother about :) --dab (𒁳) 12:19, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I've just had a similar bout of masochistic nostalgia and am now regretting it. I saw your comment here a couple of months back and thought it was spot on. The improvement in Google Books over the past few years also means anyone with half a brain no longer has to bother with Wikipedia for anything controversial. Nowadays I'm inclined to let the nationalist trolls and other POV-pushers wreck articles because they make such a mess of them no sane person would trust the resulting trainwreck. This is a prime example. I also love the fact the trolls have no conception of "tl;dr" and insist on detailing their boring obsessions at immense and unreadable length. Better to leave them to it; they usually make a better job of warning normal readers off than any number of Wiki-tags.

Anyhow, hope you are keeping well. My blood pressure has certainly improved since I stopped bothering too much about such things. Cheers. --Folantin (talk) 14:50, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Mole-Dagbon. Since you had some involvement with the Mole-Dagbon redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. —M@sssly^✉ 14:08, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi Dab. Your edits to the "origins" section of Yahweh have created a situation where two paragraphs contain identical information, in different words and from different sources. This at least shows that the information is reliable, but it would better if the two paras were merged and repetitions removed. Just a suggestion. (I have no objection to the edit you made, just a discomfort with the repetition). PiCo (talk) 03:26, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps you were looking for Marian art in the Catholic Church? LeadSongDog come howl! 19:54, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

great, thanks, somehow this didn't seem to be linked from any of the relevant articles? --dab (𒁳) 19:58, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi! Saw this comment of yours, which I heartily agree with. I have been having trouble at Ceramic art (c. 120 views per day), where he popped up one day to move the serviceable existing article to History of ceramic art (c. 10 views per day), putting in its place an unillustrated page of almost entirely technical gobbets lifted from other pages (as he left it). I've protested but 2 other editors are divided, so I've let it run to allow improvement. Nearly a month on there has hardly been any, so I will shortly move to redirect CA to HofCA (or something). Your comments now or then would be very welcome. Cheers, Johnbod (talk) 13:44, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

lol, Outline of the Transhumanist. This has got to be one of the more annoying well-meaning users of the entire project. But I suppose the law of large numbers implies that sooner or later we were going to be stuck with such a character. I am surprised, and troubled, to see that his "contributions" now also extend to actual articles. --dab (𒁳) 18:15, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

This new page appears to duplicate that for the History of the Quran. Why do we need it? TomHennell (talk) 09:53, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi Dab, It's been a long time since our paths have overlapped, but just wanted to check with you about this article. I'm planning to take it to WP:FAR -- while it's impossible to keep out the POV and poor sourcing, the least we could do is not misguide our readers into thinking that the FA star on top means that this article is one of our best. In this context, I was wondering if you could just take a look and let me know what problems you see, either here or on the article talk page would be good. I am compiling a list of specific problems, so that would be helpful. cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 10:20, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I've reinstated your old cleanup notice at Kalam cosmological argument. You were absolutely right, and although I see it was you who then removed the cleanup, I think you maybe gave up too soon :-) The article lead, as it stands, is pretty poor, focusing as it does on WLC's work. Anyway, just thought I'd pop by to say hullo. Sleety Dribble (talk) 23:50, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

The article Narsilion (band) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Does not meet any criteria of WP:BAND. All sources in the article are dead. Band's website is dead. There is no significant coverage of the band to be found (note: "Narsilion" is a Tolkien reference). The band has not released on major labels, is not an originator of its style, has not charted on major charts, has not been in competitions, and meets no criterion whatsoever.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. MSJapan (talk) 23:58, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Would you please revisit Origin of religion? You can read discussion at User talk:Editor2020#Origin of religion, regarding what happened recently. I don't get what is so new in this article that cannot be found in Theories about religions, Paleolithic religion and few others. I think it should be better kept as a redirect, what do you think Dbachmann? 2001:41D0:6B:3D00:0:0:0:21C (talk) 02:47, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

You had looked into this? 2001:41D0:6B:3D00:0:0:0:21C (talk) 17:12, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

The article Hattat Aziz Efendi has been proposed for deletion. The proposed deletion notice added to the article should explain why.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Redsky89 (talk) 06:59, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Hattat Aziz Efendi is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hattat Aziz Efendi until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Redsky89 (talk) 14:44, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

There are many articles in Wikipedia using a mediaeval ballad Prithviraj Raso as a reliable source of history, while the highest authorities on mediaeval Indian history are ignored. I added some sourced material in the article Muhammad_of_Ghor which was reverted by Kansas_Bear without discussion. I have made it a policy not to interfere in Wikipedia if someone reverts my contributions, because I have neither any interest in nor time for fightings. Since you are interested in India-related articles, you can see the changes at :- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Muhammad_of_Ghor&type=revision&diff=674742674&oldid=674729398 Kansas_Bear's talk page contains the web link of the textbook which I had cited. It is the basic textbook in India. Unfortunately, Kansas_Bear thinks the information I provided is related only to a ballad Prithviraj Raso and is irrelevant to the real history of either Muhammad_of_Ghor or Prithviraj Chauhan and other related articles, ignoring the fact that this information is related to the incident from which slavery of India begins:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Kansas_Bear#Wrong_Editing_of_Muhammad_of_Ghor I have provided it merely as an information to you, and I will not pursue this or any other issue.VJha (talk) 09:50, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

No, I said the information, was poorly placed, poorly written, and improperly sourced. Dbachmann is more than welcome to read the "discussion" on my talk page. --Kansas Bear (talk) 15:34, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Both of you are active editors (I have little time for Wikipedia NOW), and if I put it wrongly, either ignore the information or use it properly, I am not going to edit these articles because I keep away from reverted articles. I have done my duty by sending the correct information together with authoritative source, either use it or keep the correct information out of Wikipedia. Wrong info about Prithviraj is used by right-wing Hindu extremists in India, while Satish Chandra is a leftist ; I keep away from both.VJha (talk) 16:01, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Anmerkungen (durchaus berechtigt) besser in dem zusammenfassenden Lemma als in dem Gräberfeldartikel Sommerx2015 (talk) 15:06, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

völlig richtig, ich fühlte mich etwas sarkastisch, aber es ist sicher richtig, wenn die Fussnote als ganzes entfernt wird. --dab (𒁳) 10:26, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

If I reverted your edits in error. Apologies. However I did see that the section on chlorophobia - fear of clowns - had been removed and I assumed that you had done that. This section had referenced content and there was no explanation for its removal Robynthehode (talk) 17:04, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

It's not a problem. But "chlorophobia" would be fear of greens, I suppose. I did not remove the rambling about "sacred clowns in ancient Egypt", I moved it into a section on cultural comparison. --dab (𒁳) 10:28, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Dear User,

Tunisian Arabic is nominated for GA Status. Please review this work and adjust it if he involves several deficiencies.

Yours Sincerely,

--Csisc (talk) 12:03, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

I will try to modify the references so that they can be as the one of English language. I ask if you can help in this. --Csisc (talk) 14:06, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, could use some help again. The "Heathenry" person from a couple years ago is back, and is engaging in wholesale edits. He used to call himself Bhlegkorbh, but now he calls himself Midnightblueowl He now claims he is a female user, a nice piece of misdirection. I must admire his tenacity, even if he is a problem --ThorLives (talk) 23:29, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I'm ONUnicorn. Dbachmann, thanks for creating Harivamsa Purana!

I've just tagged the page, using our page curation tools, as having some issues to fix. Article cites only the text that is the subject of the article.

The tags can be removed by you or another editor once the issues they mention are addressed. If you have questions, you can leave a comment on my talk page. Or, for more editing help, talk to the volunteers at the Teahouse. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 18:49, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Arabic alphabet (writing of the hamza). Since you had some involvement with the Arabic alphabet (writing of the hamza) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Fried Gold (talk) 22:35, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

An article that you have been involved in editing— Clime —has been proposed for merging with Climata. If you are interested, please follow the (Discuss) link at the top of the article to participate in the merger discussion. Hope you have time to contribute; your comments would be welcome. Thank you. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 01:29, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Category:Hellenistic geographers, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. trespassers william (talk) 11:51, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

...to Indian articles. Just saw you on Saka era while looking through my watchlist. Mbh sub-topics have sorely missed you! —SpacemanSpiff 19:07, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

I kind of stumbled into it. I don't think I have the nerve for any kind of sustained effort though :) --dab (𒁳) 19:27, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

You can't blame me for trying! Btw, at least as far as mythology crossing over to caste history we have some new sanctions available that'll hopefully keep out The Adventures of Odin Singh in the Land of the Blue-eyed Blondes from Jat people and so on. There's now a bit more awareness on some of these topics and although the problems have increased over the past few years, the enforcement of policy has also increased; we have a few more admins able and willing to enforce policy in these areas although we seem to be shorter on editors who (IMO at least) were lost as casualties in the effort against the propagation of bovine excrement in this space. —SpacemanSpiff 03:41, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi Dbachmann, thanks for adding edit summaries. I didn't know you had been a regular at Indian articles. As you might know, vandalism and POV edits are a big problem on India pages, and the number of edits that pop on my watch list is growing everyday. Edits without summaries make it harder for me (and others) to review them. You can give cursory summaries if you wish such as "copy edit" or "rearrange" etc. If you use Twinkle, it provides a bunch of canned edit summaries you can use. - Kautilya3 (talk) 22:21, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

it's ok, Kautilya, it was a misunderstanding. --dab (𒁳) 19:27, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Boasting is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boasting until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

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I have nominated Category:Early Modern linguists for dispersal and deletion, which you appear to have envisaged anyway. Please see Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_November_13#Category:Early_Modern_linguists. – Fayenatic London 15:53, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article The Law of One (The Ra Material) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Law of One (The Ra Material) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Salimfadhley (talk) 19:14, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Neofonie is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Neofonie until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. DGG ( talk ) 19:17, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

I recently did a basic rewrite and restructure of the Uriella article (now Fiat Lux (religion)) based on high quality academic sources, however I also found much Swiss and German news coverage of Erika Bertschinger that I can't quite evaluate, even with Google Translate. Can you advise if this news coverage is just tabloid gossip/scandal, or if there is anything encyclopedic that should be included in the article? Best regards. - LuckyLouie (talk) 01:04, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:49, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree with the things you posted on the talk page "Abhas Mitra". I also posted a similar message there before seeing your message. I think we should clean this page as soon as possible since in my opinion this is simply becoming a "publicity stunt" using Wikipedia. Thank you.

Snehalshekatkar (talk) 13:05, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Question

I've a question, dear Dbachmann. Can you tell me the programm or software you used ot make this kind of maps. The colors look awesome and I, as a person interesting in cartography, want also to make these maps for my articles: heres the link to your map you posted. Thanks in advance. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Persian_Plateau.png TheColchian (talk) 02:33, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

thanks for the "trophy" :) I have replied via e-mail. --dab (𒁳) 12:10, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Per WP:DABCONGEO, Persian Empire is a concept capable of being described in an article. However, if you believe that it should be a disambiguation page, please fix all incoming links first. bd2412 T 16:11, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

BD2412 said much the same on my page but also suggested we tag it as a WP:SIA which seems a good idea. Doug Weller (talk) 19:37, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

BD2412, it was a disambiguation page de facto when I found it, it was just pointlessly spammed with a collection of maps on top of that. "Persian Empire" is indeed "a concept capable of being described in an article", and that article is at History of Iran, we do not need a separate article that also discusses the History of Iran from 600 BC to AD 1979.

Persian Empire, as it stands, is not a "WP:SIA" (comparable with Dodge Charger). If BD2412 feels compelled to invest the time and effort necessary to develop it into a SIA, he doesn't need anyone's permission to do so. Once he has turned it into a decent SIA, we can review that and the discussing will be different (likely one of WP:CFORK, but perhaps BD2412's work will be so great that everyone will agree to leave it as it is). But I have learned, in my decade on Wikipedia, that you should never waste time on discussing articles that might but do not exist with people who insist on building an argument related to an existing page based on the merit of a non-existing one: they never seem to be the same people who actually buckle down and spend a day just writing their hypothetical article, they always seem to assume good articles on Wikipedia tend to emerge magically or organically. Let BD2412 write the article and we can talk about it then, or let him concede that there is no article under discussion at present, just an obvious disambiguation page. --dab (𒁳) 10:12, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi Dbachmann, did you notice the rant about the Uysyn which Barefact posted on his website? He has a specific library on this website displaying how he's influenced wikipedia, along with other claims of Etruscans, Sumerians, Celts, Vikings etc being of Turkic origin. Sockmasters like Tirgil34, Egaplaicesp and Yakbul are is frequently quoting Barefact and his site on Wikipedia, while Barefact frequently refers to Tirgil34's Youtube account, which in turn links to Barefacts webside. It seems like Barefact plays an intricate role in the recent turanist onslaught on Wikipedia. Is there anything that can be done about this? Krakkos (talk) 21:49, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, of course, "Barefact" is a well-known troll that has cost Wikipedia countless man-hours of cleanup and babysitting over the years. If the administrative process worked, he would have been permabanned long ago. However, I have stopped bothering with administrativa or trying to enforce rules or sanity on Wikipedia years ago, because I found it interfered with my peace of mind and enjoyment of researching content too much. --dab (𒁳) 09:59, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

To You and Yours!
FWiW Bzuk (talk) 18:13, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello Dbachmann: Enjoy the holiday season and upcoming winter solstice, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, Solomon7968 06:25, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Use {{subst:Season's Greetings}} to send this message

An apparent new user has been invoking your name at this article. Any insight? Best, Kafka Liz (talk) 12:15, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

My insight would be that Wikipedia is still trolled by Türkic cryptonationalists (see section on User:Barefact above), because the administrative process is broken. And I thank you for watching out for the article.

Note that I am by no means "specialized" or particularly interested in Turkic nationalism in specifically (nor do I have any prior specialist knowledge on or stakes in the topic, I have to research it from secondary sources like any other subject); the organised Persian/Iranian kind does even more damage to our articles, and there is any number of other types, albeit mostly far less prominent. --dab (𒁳) 13:45, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Heh, the Türks (sic indeed) versus the Persians. Good times. Some of the dumbest POV-warriors I ever met on Wikipedia. I've almost completely disengaged from that area, overpopulated as it is with socks of banned users. I used to have a pretty good "bad faith" detector: a Türkic jingoist will insist the Scythians, Ossetians etc. were really Türkic not Iranian; a Persian jingoist will do anything to distract from the fact that Iran was ruled by Turkic dynasties for centuries. They're also the kind of editors who insist imperialism is a Bad Thing yet edit-war over which of their peoples had the biggest empire (!). Since I know only two (maybe three?) active admins who deal with any nationalist troublemakers at all and I don't want to stretch them to breaking point, I'm out of there. It's clear there is no will at a higher level to sort out the fundamental problems with nationalist POV-pushing so I don't know why I should lose any more sleep over it. Unfortunately, there are few if any areas of Wikipedia not afflicted by their quota of belligerent bozos. How I miss Doctor Boubouleix, someone who put imagination - and crazy franglais - into his disruption.

On that cheerful note, Merry Christmas! --Folantin (talk) 15:24, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I might be willing to look at Turkic origin stuff, but can't promise. I'm surprised this hasn't come to ArbCom. Doug Weller (talk) 17:28, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I hope Dab doesn't mind me butting in on his talk page again to wish you a Merry Christmas, Doug. BTW You were one of the "two (maybe three?) active admins" I had in mind above. Cheers.--Folantin (talk) 17:33, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

• On the Yin and yang page, your edit caused a cite error (help). (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:16, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Regarding this: I'm curious how you knew who it was (and that it isn't Paul)? I just grabbed it from the Paul the Deacon article, and I don't know anything about him other than the role he played in De verborum significatu, so this is less a challenge than a question for my own edification :) — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:55, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

The image had been added to the Paul the Deacon article by mistake. See my image description on commons. --dab (𒁳) 17:50, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Turkology has a long section on "Persecution in Soviet Russia" and a list of "Turkology scholars persecuted in 20th-century Soviet Russia". This appears to be a perfectly fine subject for an article on its own, and given that Turkic probably has been studied to a greater extent at Russian than Western universities, it is likely to be a subject worth treating briefly in the main article, but the amount of material there now seems somewhat WP:UNDUE. --Hegvald (talk) 02:07, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

This is hilarious. Of course "Turkology in the Soviet Union" would be a valid topic, but what we have here is more random "Barefact" type randomness. I do not doubt that Stalin gave a hard time to nationalist intellectuals, but I doubt he "persecuted Turkology" in particular. Anyway, "a Turkology student was arrested during Stalinism" is hardly Wikipedia material. --dab (𒁳) 07:15, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Dear Dbachmann, I have been involved in developing the recent Karait article and the Khereid article has been brought up quite a bit by one user in the talk there. Having a looked through the history of the Khereid page I found your insertion and completely agree. The general feel on the Talk:Khereid page is also in harmony with the need for a complete re-write. Furthermore the name of the article and much of its information was inserted by sockpuppets of blocked User:Ancientsteppe. I want to give it a bash but it looks like quite a massive job and I am a bit of a novice. I would like to trim it right down to bare bones and remove much of the information to another more streamlined article. Any tips and pointers would be appreciated. YuHuw (talk) 20:24, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I've taken a bash, any constructive criticism would be welcome.YuHuw (talk) 21:52, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I am sure it is much improved.

If I may make a suggestion: I should avoid the phrasing "scholars suggest" or similar: if your source is Grousset (1970), you should say "Grousset (1970) suggests". If Grousset 1970 does not himself suggest anything but say that "scholarly opinion is such and such", you should quote that passage verbatim and say something like "according to Gorusset (1970), scholarly opinion to the effect such and such is considered this or that".

also, you should get rid of "references" that are just websites, such as history.kz or www-rohan.sdsu.edu; if these are online copies of published literature, you should cite the literature (and then you can still link to the online copy for ease of reference). --dab (𒁳) 11:26, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

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Hello Dbachmann,

there is a question about the File Europe islands.svg https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Europe_islands.svg It is in italian but used also in the german version of the list. Is it posible, to translate the names of the islands to german and if, how. --Elrond (talk) 15:25, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Hello, I understand I am required to post this here because I mentioned you in a dispute resolution discussion Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#Talk:Karait. Best regards. YuHuw (talk) 08:39, 27 January 2016 (UTC) Very sorry, still new to all this, apparently I had to move it here and notify you again There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. YuHuw (talk) 18:04, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Hello User:Dbachmann, can you take a look at the Maiorana article to see if the wording is right, if comas are used in the right place (or needed in others) and check were links are used. I'd appreciate it very much, tell me what you think, thanks. --Emperorofthedaleks (talk) 01:50, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Emperorofthedaleks, I should not worry about comma placement too much, your first concern is to cite a source for your information. Also, you may want to consider a merger with Majorana (surname) (or else establish that the two names are of distinct origin). --dab (𒁳) 19:06, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, as long as you think the article is worded in a way that makes sense, I trust you, cheers.--Emperorofthedaleks (talk) 19:43, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, do you also trust me when I say that you cannot say stuff like "The surname Maiorana is derived from the Norman given name Mauger", even if it is true, unless you cite your source? That was kind of my main point. Or, indeed, the entire point of Wikipedia as a project. --dab (𒁳) 00:00, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I understand, but then again a lot of other surname articles on Wikipedia say stuff without citing source(s), I'm not saying it's right but there's not much point to me applying this to Maiorana article without getting the rest of them. A good example of one is Stock (surname) which says "The surname Stock is derived from the German word stoc", and it is true, as with Maiorana origin, just isn't a source listed. Anyway, you checked the article's presentation and spelling like I asked so I'm grateful, thanks. --Emperorofthedaleks (talk) 00:56, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

WP:OTHERCRAP, just because we have a lot of dimwits and lazy people editing here this doesn't mean you have to be one of them :) I would not have insisted on this if you hadn't specifically asked for my opinion about your edit. --dab (𒁳) 10:07, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

A tag has been placed on Political extremism in Switzerland requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done for the following reason:

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If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. PanchoS (talk) 15:20, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

There is a discussion regarding merging History of Punic-era Tunisia: chronology and History of Punic-era Tunisia: culture into History of Carthage being held at Talk:History of Carthage#Merge. You are being approached as you are a recent or significant editor of one or other of the articles, or because you have expressed interest in the merge previously. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 19:06, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

You are invited to comment on the article "List of expeditions ordered by Muhammad" in the Wikipedia Administrators Notice Board. Your input is highly valued as you edited this article previously.

Click here: Controversial Islamic Article-90% of page wiped out by Muslims, possible bias to comment--Misconceptions2 (talk) 03:33, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

I see your name on nearly every page related to things Germania. I may not always agree with you, but you seem an intelligent, balanced, and unbiased user. Thank you for your valuable contributions here.73.220.34.167 (talk) 20:57, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

thank you, I have to say, I do not always agree with myself :) as after more than ten years of doing this, there is no way to avoid learning new things. I would love to go over points of disagreement and improve coverage on them (but you should get an account for that of course). --dab (𒁳) 07:37, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Sadly, wikipedia does not encourage accounts. I do not know how you do it. But I have all of my contributions or edits deleted immediately, I get stalked, harassed, banned, and so on. I am not ashamed to say that I have lost many accounts and have given up. Strangely, as an "IP" as the dialect calls us derisively, I my edits and contributions have a 90% rate of retention. With an account, only about 5% stays. Strange... I know sometimes I am informal in talk pages, but so are others. In articles I try to be a pragmatic and practical German... There should be some discussion about the phenomenon. 73.220.34.167 (talk) 22:07, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi there,

Some months ago you pointed out that File:Paulus Diaconus.jpg is not, in fact, Paul the Deacon but is actually Eutropius (historian) (I presume, rather than Eutropius (consul)). I left a message about it, and you directed me to your Commons description. I forgot to follow up, but am reminded today so doing so. I'm just curious how you know it was a mistake? I have no reason to doubt what you're saying, but if it is indeed a mistake, that image is still all over various Wikipedias as Paul the Deacon (and, because of that, all over the Internet as such). Perhaps the answer is as simple as "I can read Latin and the text says it's Eutropius". If that's the case, I'd be happy to rename the file on Commons and carry out the replacement of the images elsewhere -- I just need to know what I'm basing it on (as is probably apparent, I cannot read Latin and do not see any readily available translation). Thanks. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 20:17, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

I can read Latin and the text says it's Eutropius :) --dab (𒁳) 16:49, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi, you have moved Historic states represented in Turkish presidential seal to 16 Great Turkic Empires (without a discussion, by the way). Well I don't think this is a wise choice. As you can see in the discussion, 16 Turkic empires is not an encyclopaedic topic; simply because it is not a fact. But the presidential seal is a fact. (It is more or less like United Kingdom coat of arms; there are no lions in the United Kingdom, but there are lions in the coat of arms.) Thus the former title is a more appropriate title. Nedim Ardoğa (talk) 18:42, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

The presidental seal already has its own article, if you want to merge it, propose a merge. The "fact" here is the 1969 idea about these "16 states". It's a topic of Turkish nationalism and national identity, not of "historic states". You will find it hard to dispute the "facts" that as they are now presented in the article (1969 idea and criticism, fictional flags, Erdogan's reception etc.). If you do not think these facts are encyclopedic, you are free to propose a merger or submit the page for deletion. --dab (𒁳) 19:58, 17 April 2016 (UTC)$

Hi,

Your recent changes to the sexuality section needs some revision. Other editors might just revert it otherwise. The first sentence reads as though homosexuality is a crime, this really needs to be reversed or moderated. A later sentence in sensu stricto reads as though Richard were capable of sexual relations when dead. Urselius (talk) 10:07, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Homosexuality is not a crime (in most countries) today, but it obviously was during Richard's lifetime. I am not making a value judgement at all, but I imagine this must really go without saying (apparently not?). The main argument in favour of his homosexuality seems to be based on his apparent confession to the "sin of sodomy"? I.e. it is beyond debate that Richard, and everyone else in his time, considered "sodomy" a "sin", the question is merely whether he did confess himself guilty of it.

You are free to rephrase or clarify, the main point of my edit was to shorten an excessively wordy summary of what is a topic of a 20th-century "historian's dispute" only very tangential to the article subject. But your use of "needs to be reversed or moderated" suggests you are not really familiar with Wikipedia or its content guidelines? --dab (𒁳) 10:34, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

In Die Serapionsbrüder, E. T. A. Hoffmann frequently mentions a certain Haftitius as one of his main sources. I assume it's the same person as de:s:ADB:Hafftiz, Peter. Could you verify from German sources? --Ghirla^-трёп- 19:08, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

I suppose it's him. I put together a quick page at Peter Hafftiz. --dab (𒁳) 11:34, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. I came across the name while working on ru:Серапионовы братья (Гофман). --Ghirla^-трёп- 16:08, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

An edit made to Romanos IV Diogenes at 05:39, 1 November 2010 by user:Oatley2112. At 10:33, 17 March 2016 you copied text from Romanos IV Diogenes. Your comment to the edit history "import from emperor bio pages" does not meet the requirements of WP:Copying within Wikipedia. See the section WP:ATTREQ. You needed to provide a link to the pages from which you copied the text eg "text copied from Romanos IV Diogenes..."

There is a further problem. You have copied text from several pages and have provided short and long citations to two different books by the same author:

• Norwich, John Julius (1993), Byzantium: The Apogee, Penguin, ISBN 0-14-011448-3
• Norwich, John Julius (1996), Byzantium: The Decline and Fall, Penguin, ISBN 0-14-011449-1

but because you have not included the year in the short citations it is impossible to tell if the short citation "Norwich, pg. 5" refers to to a page in the volume Byzantium: The Apogee or Byzantium: The Decline and Fall.

Please fix the attribution to meet copyright attritions and please fix the short citations by adding the year to the short citations. -- PBS (talk) 20:44, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

You are, technically, 100% right, and I was actually half wondering if anyone was going to call me out on it, so, well done, it is reasurring to see that there are still people looking out for the project's integrity. --dab (𒁳) 11:44, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind remarks. However please can you fix the short citation "Norwich, pg. 5"? -- PBS (talk) 11:24, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

By going back to the original articles and formatting their short citations with dates, and some further string matches, I think I have managed to match up all the citations. It turns out that "Norwich, pg. 5" came from Alexios I Komnenos and the editors there had used yet another volume by John Julius Norwich so I was able to fix the inline citation to Norwich 1995, p. 5 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFNorwich1995 (help). So there is no need for you to work it out. -- PBS (talk) 21:38, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you kindly for your contribution! Fixing things that you find are broken is pretty much the primary task of the Wikipedian imho. --dab (𒁳) 12:51, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Descent to the underworld. Since you had some involvement with the Descent to the underworld redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. The Traditionalist (talk) 01:33, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

A file that you uploaded or altered, [[:File:]], has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for discussion. See also The mass request on the commons of which it is a part. Please see the discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Files on skin colour AlwaysUnite (talk) 22:22, 16 May 2016 (UTC) AlwaysUnite (talk) 22:22, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

I've recently commented on an old post of yours at Talk:Astronomy_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world#WP:NAME. You might want to comment. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 19:02, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

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Thank you, The Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Search Steering Committee via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:49, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Index of urban studies articles. Since you had some involvement with the Index of urban studies articles redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Stefan2 (talk) 17:22, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Name of Luxembourg. Since you had some involvement with the Name of Luxembourg redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. BDD (talk) 17:39, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

User:Dr. Blofeld has created Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/Contests. The idea is to run a series of contests/editathons focusing on each region of Africa. He has spoken to Wikimedia about it and $1000-1500 is possible for prize money. As someone who has previously expressed interest in African topics, would you be interested in contributing to one or assisting draw up core article/missing article lists? He says he's thinking of North Africa for an inaugural one in October. If interested please sign up in the participants section of the Contest page, thanks.♦ --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 01:15, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Wikimedia is now funding Wikipedia content? That's despicable. Clearly, Wikipedia as a project is now in active danger because Wikimedia has become over-funded and over-motivated. --dab (𒁳) 08:51, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

I'm trying to make Assyrian people articles less crazy primordialist, care to help? This template basically sums up everything wrong with the wikiproject. My view on the subject is that Assyrians are descended from multiple peoples including but certainly not exclusive to ancient assyrians but its absurd to say they are the ancient assyrians- the assyrian empire comprised many peoples and it was never ethnically exclusive in the first place, not to mention it was invaded by other peoples and the assyrian church was a prosyletizing religion. As Encylopedia Brittanica affirms,"In the New Babylonian, or Chaldean, empire, Chaldeans, Aramaeans, and Babylonians became largely indistinguishable." One of my biggest concerns is the ridiculous assertion that assyrians always had an assyrian identity and that westerners confused them by calling them other things- when the opposite is true. Also the repetition of the myth that "syrian" is simply a corruption of "assyrian". I also think it's important not to "take sides"- ie don't say "they call themselves aramean but they're really assyrians"- which is exactly what arameans say about assyrians. We should just use the nuetral term "syriac".--Monochrome_Monitor Sources:

You are obviously right on all of this. I have invested a lot of time trying to clean up this area of Wikipedia, but the "primordialist" stuff just creeps back in when people aren't looking. So these days I am taking a cost-benefit analysis to editing Wikipedia mostly.

It isn't necessary to remove all mention of Assyria in the Syrian-Aramaic context. It's a case of Romantic Nationalism, and coverage should focus on the modern sentiment regardless of its historical justification rather than trying to debunk the sentiment. Back in the day I created the Terms for Syriac Christians article precisely to discuss all of this nonsense and get it out of the way for other pages where it is off topic. Of course the page is buried in crap by now, c.f. this for how it was supposed to look like: i.e. a quick overview of this craziness for the uninitiated. WP:TNT may be the best approach here. --dab (𒁳) 07:53, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

actually, I should add that it appears that Syria is indeed a "corruption" of Assyria after all. Not that it matters to any of this, as the two forms have been separate for 2000 years or so (but not 2800 years). --dab (𒁳) 07:59, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

I'm not talking about Syria- which is a corruption of assyria- but about Syrian/Syriac the ethnonym. Syriacs used to call themselves Suroye, or Syrians. They say that "syriac/syrian" is a corruption of "assyrian". The word for assyrian in syriac is Aturaye anyway, not Asuroye. I'm looking for a completely neutral source on the matter. The source wikipedia uses to say that syriac=assyrian is incidentally "Assyria and Syria:Synonyms"- to which this is a direct response. --Monochrome_Monitor 16:58, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

well, it is hard to see how "Syria" can derive from "Assyria" without also "Syrian" deriving from "Assyrian". But this is ancient (Iron Age) etymology, it has no bearing on modern ethnonymy. --dab (𒁳) 07:20, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

In less controversial related matters, the article Panbabylonism is totally bullshit. It should be called "similarities between jewish and babylonian traditions"- but that's not panbabylonism, which is now considered psuedoscience. It was this brief movement supported mostly by german assyriologists which basically said that the cultures of ancient levant if not most of the world are directly derived from babylonian culture. This has different streams, including the "Star-myth" theory started by Hugo Winckler that every ancient near eastern culture/religion is based on babylonian astrology/astronomy. A more controversial stream (with antisemitic under and overtones) is the Bible-Babel theory, which says that the jews "stole" the hebrew bible from "aryan" babylon (similar to the way afrocentrists say greeks "stole" from "black" egypt). Panbabylonism is now only supported by assyrian nationalist "scholars", including Simo Parpola... who is used as a source on many assyrian articles. Here's a great rundown of panbabylonism. Also the article Lebanese people is littered with phonecianism... some of that is my fault (added the category "phoenician people" (as part of an effort to categorize canaanite peoples) and then reverted it but was reverted back.--Monochrome_Monitor 17:47, 19 July 2016 (UTC) Lastly, how far should we let the nationalism go? For me calling arameans assyrian is out of the question, as is appropriating babylonian achievements because both assyrians and babylonians came from the akkadians... assyrians in contrast to babylonians were pretty barbarous.--Monochrome_Monitor 18:05, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

I am really happy to see a critical editor with the energy to tackle this mess, believe me. But it would seem that you yourself somehow are partisan in this? I mean, this is about modern ethnic identity, while "Aramaeans" and "Assyrians" both are ancient nations. How the hell is it "correct" or "incorrect" to call your ethnic group after some ancient group you are loosely descended from? It's like calling the Swiss Helvetians, or the Germans Teutons, or, for that matter, the British British. It's not "correct" or "incorrect", it's just a matter of convention. Wikipedia doesn't need to argue against these terms, it needs to get rid of all the childish ethnic essentialism that naive souls apparently feel the need to constantly insert.

I would still object to your statement that "Panbabylonism is totally bullshit". That's like saying that "Plutonism is totally bullshit": it's a historical term for the early, and possibly still flawed, phase of what would become so standard a view that it ceased to even have a special name. --dab (𒁳) 07:20, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

I have absolutely no stakes in the issue. I'm still learning and navigating the nationalist waters. When I say "call the arameans assyrians" I meant call the ancient arameans assyrians.... not the modern identifying ones. When I say "panbabylonism is totally bullshit"- I mean the article. The article describes something which is totally unrelated to panbabylonism. THIS is panbabylonism. It's like ancient aliens stuff.--Monochrome_Monitor 07:59, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

I see, I see. Your having no stakes in this and still being willing to engage makes you a very valuable asset. But I do not understand your issue with the Panbabylonism article. It isn't excellent, but it clearly describes something directly related to the page you just linked. The Hebrew Bible, as redacted in the 5th century BC, was clearly and very stronly influenced by Babylonian culture of the 6th century BC. The influence can be overstated, I suppose, but there is no doubt whatsoever that the influence was there. For people in the 19th century, this was pretty much an earth-shaking revelation while we can more or less file it under "meh, stands to reason".

Of course, the ancient Aramaeans and Assyrians started out as two completely separate branches of the Semitic peoples. But their de-facto merger took place by about the 6th century BC, so for any time later than, say, 500 BC, it is perfectly reasonable to treat "Aramaean" and "Assyrian" as a continuum, or melting pot, or ensemble, or something. --dab (𒁳) 08:06, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

A valuable asset, eh? Am I being recruited for a mission? That's not what panbabylonism is about. Panbabylonism is a theory that every religion in the near east if not the world is based on mystical interpretations of babylonian astrology. The bible-babel school also does not say there was "influence". It says there was a direct appropriation. As for arameaness, aforementioned mixing was Chaldea/Aramean babylon. But in the levant arameans were always a large majority... well till the arabs. Incidentally you mentioned semitic peoples, that's an article I have a long struggle with. Check the talk page discussions if you dare. I have the bear bones page in "progress". --Monochrome_Monitor 08:20, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

The mission known as WP:ENC (aka Wikipedia). Well. I would endorse this account,

Hugo Winckler prägte dann den Begriff Panbabylonismus, um den von ihm postulierten weitreichenden Einfluss des assyrischen Denkens auf den israelischen Gottesgedanken zu beschreiben, den er als Echo des Astralkultes ansah. Ihm folgten Peter Jensen und Alfred Jeremias, die einen Großteil der Erzählungen des Alten Testaments aus dem Gilgamesch-Epos herleiteten.

It used to be a serious hypothesis, and it was partly correct even though exaggerated; weitreichender Einfluss des assyrischen Denkens auf den israelischen Gottesgedanken is pretty much what I said, and meant, and is probably also partially compatible with the way you prefer to phrase it. Make of that what you will, but let's save our breaths to tackle the actual nonsense in article space. Sigh, and the "Semitic" thing is idiotic. When I say "Semitic peoples", obviously I am referring to what is treated, for some reason, under "Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples". --dab (𒁳) 13:41, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

As am I. I don't understand why they cant just be under "Semitic peoples". In fact the article "ancient semitic speaking peoples" is quite new. On panbabylonism "the fundamental tenets were eventually dismissed as psuedoscientific"--Monochrome_Monitor 18:38, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

yeah, I am afraid the thing you are pointing me at strikes me as postmodernist pap. I do not deny that "Panbabylonism" and what not is tied up with the Orientalism and even Antisemitism of its era. This is what I meant by "exaggeration". This doesn't mean, however, that its "fundamental tenets" were "pseudoscientific". This is nonsense. They were, at best, wrong (I would say, partly wrong), but being wrong does not amount to "pseudoscience", the same way phlogiston was not "pseudoscience", it was actual science that just happened to turn out to be flawed (and flawed not just in a verifiable way but even in a helpful way conductive to further progress). If you are going to throw out the difference between error and pseudoscience for rhetorical effect, you will end up with mere rhetorics. --dab (𒁳) 09:19, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Please note I am not defending Panbabylonism as "correct" any more than I am defending phlogiston. I am just saying it is so easy to see its flaws today that it tends to obscure the parts that were actually correct and novel, but by now are so unremarkable that we fail to even recognize them as achievements. --dab (𒁳) 09:24, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

I'm against post-modernist pap as much as anyone. I'll quote a different source. "Almost in scholastic isolation Kugler demolished the great edifice of Panbabylonism theory piece by piece. The Panbabylonists had no answer to the criticism put forward in his books Im Bannkreis Babels (1910) and the monumental Sternkunde und Sterndienst in Babel (1907—13), both of which unfortunately were never translated into English. With the death of one of the movement's leaders, cuneiform philologist Hugo Winckler (1861—1913), Panbabylonism was scientifically dead by World War I and then banished for ever to the lunatic fringe of pseudoscientific writings." Phlogiston was an obsolete scientific theory. Panbabylonism was psuedoscience. --Monochrome_Monitor 01:40, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

fine, it was "banished for ever to the lunatic fringe of pseudoscientific writings" after 1913. This means that anyone arguing "Panbabylonism" in 1920 would be as guilty of pseudoscience as someone arguing for phlogiston in 1790. I recognize that implicit in "Panbabylonism" is the heavy emphasis on Astralkult, not just "biblical mythology is taken from Mesopotamian sources". While biblical mythology is, of course, largely taken from Mesopotamian sources, the thing about Astralkult had, I completely agree, always been slightly mad. --dab (𒁳) 15:58, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

The oldest parts of biblical mythology are undeniably mesopotamian. However it's mostly influenced by ancient canaanite religion. And you have to give it credit for its novel ideas. Monotheism for one.--Monochrome_Monitor 02:17, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Re your edit comments on these pages today, the Ancient Semitic Speaking Peoples article was split from Semitic languages, not from Semitic people. So "merging back" would result in a different outcome to the one you are proposing.

The separate question of merging Semitic people and Ancient Semitic speaking peoples has been discussed on the talk page there, so you might find it helpful to review those threads before making your case on the talk page. Oncenawhile (talk) 16:29, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

fair point, thank you. I rephrase to the effect that the material split off the languages article should have been merged into the existing people page. --dab (𒁳) 20:22, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

You're right, it should've! :) --Monochrome_Monitor 01:42, 22 July 2016 (UTC) My thought is that the current article could be made into an article on "semitic race", which is indeed an obsolete category. However there should be a new article based on ancient semitic speaking peoples renamed to semitic peoples which talks about the ethnolinguistic group, the religion/language/culture of the protosemites, their origins, and their ancient civilizations. And in passing mention modern populations.--Monochrome_Monitor 14:12, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

That is, of course, the obvious approach (e.g. Iranian peoples vs. Iranid race etc.) --dab (𒁳) 15:54, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Yep. And Indo-Aryan peoples vs Aryan race. But two users on the talk firmly believe that semitic peoples is a made-up thing that should not be a page.--Monochrome_Monitor 23:50, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

they are wrong, of course, and hopefully, Wikipedia process should not be stalled indefinitely just by people being wrong, but I have to say I don't blame them because "race" is one of the most broken topics on Wikipedia, barring none. Probably an effect of American society being on the brink of a race war, there is no way around the fact that Wikipedia is based in the US and en-wiki is disproportionately affected by US biases and politics. --dab (𒁳) 07:21, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

In proof of wikipedia's cognitive bias I assumed you were American.--Monochrome_Monitor 02:14, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

it's true that I am not, but I do hope I would be making exactly the same point if I was, seeing that it has nothing to do with my own person :) --dab (𒁳) 15:44, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

To be fair we did invent the internet.--Monochrome_Monitor 23:23, 27 July 2016 (UTC) Note I made edits to Assyria. It's still strongly assyrianist but that's inevitable. At least now it doesn't claim modern religions come from assyrian "star myths",aka panbabylonism. I also found this gem.--Monochrome_Monitor 00:07, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

It appears that you copied or moved text from Christian symbolism into Staurogram. {{uw-copying}} Diannaa (talk) 00:46, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Check out this category Category:Assyrian ethnic groups. Yeesh. Stop pushing your spurious assyrian identity on neighboring peoples who happen to be christian and speak aramaic! When you think about it the idea that all middle eastern christians are assyrian in origin is completely ridiculous. Assyrians were a minority in their own empire.--Monochrome_Monitor 17:52, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

I know, it's pathetic. They are far from the only group doing this, but still, the "Assyrians" are a particularly pathological example of this. It's clearly a "First World problem". Syriac Christians are clearly an oppressed group in the Middle East, but then they move to the West, they are no longer oppressed in any shape or form, but then they lose their religious faith and realise that the identity of "Syriac Christians" is inextricably tied to religion. But they still feel they have an identity even after they become secularised, so they have to construct this artificial crypto-ethno-nationalism and lash out at anyone in their own group who isn't 100% on board with it. --dab (𒁳) 07:55, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Exactly. Middle Eastern Christians used to have a primary identity in their religious affiliation- Nestorian, Jacobite, Maronite, Chaldean, Greek Orthodox. However the rise of pan-Arabism and increasing secularization led many groups to seek a distinct ethnic identity in continuity with a pre-Islamic ancient people. Now I'm not saying Assyrians are merely "Christian Arabs", as some Arabs and Kurds say.They are a distinct group which has long been endogamous.But the whole "we are pure-blooded descendants of the oldest civilization on Earth" (many appropriate Sumer) is just fascistic premordialist nonsense. I'm guessing I linked this to you already.Template:History of Assyrian people--Monochrome_Monitor 01:06, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Why did you remove the years from Phoenicia in this edit? They even had a source. Debresser (talk) 17:14, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

no, man, the reference probably confirms that Byblos was inhabited in the Early Bronze Age, but it's (a) a dead link and (b) has nothing to do with the topic anyway. "Phoenicia" is the term for the Canaanite culture in classical antiquity. If you want to discuss Bronze Age Canaan, there is already an article for that, it's at Canaan. --dab (𒁳) 18:49, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

I see. Thanks for your reply. Debresser (talk) 22:35, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

{{uw-editsummary}} Eric ^talk 13:03, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Any specific article / edit you want to address here? Just slapping a template on my talkpage isn't going to tell me what you want from me. --dab (𒁳) 20:27, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

My post did mention Christ Pantocrator when I placed it via Twinkle. But before posting, I looked at your contributions and saw that you rarely give an edit summary, so you might consider it a general request. It makes things easier for your collaborators here if you provide them. Thanks in advance for doing so. Eric ^talk 21:43, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

On the rare occasion I provide an edit summary it's usually something like "deleted bullshit".Sometimes I include a shout-out to the editor before me, like: "stop adding bullshit".--Monochrome_Monitor 01:12, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Nice collaborative attitude. Eric ^talk 03:16, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

not my attitude. My attitude is that I will give an edit summary if I expect I am doing something controversial or at least non-obvious. Or I will start to give edit summaries on a specific article when challenged. Look, my edit count is in the six figures, I guess somewhere near a quarter million. Yes, many of these are minor, fixing my own typos and so on. But the burden of coming up with a description of what I am doing, just because someone might be watching, even if it takes only one second, would translate to several days full time work over my entire edit history. I try to be cooperative but also efficient. --dab (𒁳) 08:57, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, dab, my last comment was directed at MM. I don't want you to have the feeling you're being watched closely: Christ Pantocrator is on my watchlist, I noticed an edit without an edit summary, then looked at the diff out of curiosity, saw that the edit was helpful, then saw your contribution history and didn't see many edit summaries, so I hastily posted the message. I now regret that if it came across as peremptory. I understand your desire to save time by skipping the edit summary step. But that can then cost even more time for others not familiar with your work who might feel compelled to check the edit. A little edit summary can spare someone that time, especially if they've come to know you as someone who's here to do good work. You are a prolific editor, while I am more of a roving copyeditor (nitpicker?); that may explain any high-handedness I show regarding edit summaries. Thanks for all your good work here, and sorry if I came across wrong with the template. Eric ^talk 12:27, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

it's fine Eric, you had the right to ask of course. --dab (𒁳) 14:01, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

I know. I was being sardonic, not implying my attitude was appropriate. --Monochrome_Monitor 19:22, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

everyone's fine. The important thing here is to realize that the guidelines are just that, and that what really counts is WP:ENC, WP:DICK and WP:AGF. Also, too often, WP:FRINGE/WP:DUE, WP:TIGERS and WP:RANDY. --dab (𒁳) 12:15, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

{{uw-npa2}} ^Talk/_Stalk 00:45, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

I did not attack you, I suggested you may have a conflict of interest because you are personally invested in the topic. This is a fair point to make, if it was an "attack" it would follow that nobody is allowed to call anyone out of editorial bias. Now I would also point out to you to please WP:DNTTR. --dab (𒁳) 05:21, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

hello seljuk empire origin kınık(tribe).kınık and kankalis different two group.. this is False information--Osman bey (talk) 17:37, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Please don't dump random inscrutable claims on my talkpage. --dab (𒁳) 19:49, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm bothered by the fact that the page for arameans is "aramean identity" while assyrians is "assyrian people". It's like we're indulging one nationalism as legitimate but not the other.The community is very diverse and we let assyrianists dominate the arena because they are politically active in the west. Obviously this is also because of anglo-bias, ie, because of the zeal of British missionaries and 19th century Assyriologists "assyrian" is the favored term for syriacs, (I know syriac refers to a language but I consider it a nuetral term in light of the fact that syrian now refers to a nationality) but it doesn't have to be this way. Most people don't know people calling themselves assyrian exist, nor arameans. In a world of ideas accessible information shapes reality- and wikipedia has chosen a side before the discussion has begun. Basically my proposal is either make the aramean article as assertive as the assyrian or the assyrian one as cautious as the aramean.--Monochrome_Monitor 06:07, 25 August 2016 (UTC) Also, Category:Assyrian_Christians_by_denomination This category needs to die.--Monochrome_Monitor 08:25, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

There is one article about this people known as "Assyrian people, also known as Chaldeans, Syriacs, and Arameans". This is a question of WP:NAME. I tried really, really hard to convince people to use a more neutral title, but the "Assyrian" team decided to just gang up and push their preferred solution. The Aramaean identity article is not about the group (which already has its article), its parallel to Assyrian nationalism, not Assyrian people.

The established term for this group is "Syriac Christians". The problem with this only develops after they go to Sweden or the US, decide they are atheists or nonreligious, and suddenly need a new ethnic identifier that doesn't involve the term "Christians" (i.e. the very characteristic that singled them out for 1000 years and prevented them from just blending into the general population of the Levant).

The title "Assyrians" should disambiguate between Assyria ("the Assyirans" overwhelmingly refers to ancient Assyria), Syriac Christians and Assyrian nationalism. "Assyrian people" should be Syriac Christians, or possibly some compromise solution (used by the Canadian census iirc) such as "Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs" (or any of the ton of redirects already pointing at the page). I wrote an entire article on this, Terms for Syriac Christians, back in the day when I tried to convince people to look for a reasonable solution. Once it became evident that teh Assyrians were just playing tag-team and were not interested in Wikipedia guidelines, I kind of threw up my hands and decided I had better things to do with my time. --dab (𒁳) 12:16, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

But that article does focus on Neo-aramaic speakers in northern Iraq. It does not have nearly as much relevance to levantine christians who think themselves aramean, let alone maronites who think themselves phonecian. Syriac christian is not a real ethnic group, all of the neo-aramaic christians in the ME cannot have one common origin (well, unless you count proto-semites) and they never developed a homogenous pan-syriac identity. Each generally thinks the other is part of their group, and while I think its silly to base Assyrian peoplehood on spurious ties to akkad or ashur (rather than very real ties to ninevah), the people called "Assyrians" are a distinct ethnic group which is mostly endogamous. Syriac in my view is useful as a nuetral ethnoreligious/linguistic grouping, but not as a catch-all term. There are distinct communities of neo-aramaic-speaking christians, with distinct dialects and distinct foods and distinct churches, there are many cultural similarities (ie, most of them say "shlama") but these similarities are more a result of a shared language and shared religion and a shared experience under the Islamic powers that be than anything. In the end they can call themselves whatever they want, they'll still be unique ethnic groups, if ones with a history as simple and linear as they'd like to imagine.--Monochrome_Monitor 13:20, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

As for the tag team, yeah, the aramean faction is less politically organized. For instance the category "Aramean Wikipedians" was deleted with the justification "there's already an 'Assyrian Wikipedians' category, and the original Arameans don't exist any longer..." And that guy is allowed to delete categories. Of course I agree with you on your proposals, but we'd have to be careful about it. Assyrians can be reasonably called Assyrians (modern), and we'd handle the stuff from the christianization of the neo-assyrian empire and after as history with the caveat that some claim to be descended from akkadians/Old Assyrians and this is a subject of nationalist rather than historical debate. Assyrians percieve any attack on their nationalism as an attack on Assyrians, and we have to recognize that they are a distinct group and not bury them under "assyrian identity". Its not the assyrian that's problematic from a historians perspective, its claims to have a continuous and direct descent from the Old Assyrians. That reminds me, Assyrian continuity needs to be TNTd. We need to make Parpola off-limits.--Monochrome_Monitor 13:20, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

I sympathize with all you say, and this is exactly the kind of topic I would be up for researching. But I find I cannot develop articles on complex topics while at the same time fighting edit-wars against organised trolls. So you have my support, but I doubt I am going to invest substantial effort into this topic. Regarding "continuity", I guess this is similar to our "Panbabylonian disagreement". My position is something like duh, trivially there is continuity. Probably every human alive today is "descended from the ancient Assyrians" genealogically (identical ancestors point). But the distinction between "Aramaeans" and "Assyrians" disappeared before 500 BC, so the modern appellations are just "team names" without any actual semantic content. The reason for the distribution of Neo-Aramaic today is the Neo-Assyrian Empire, because Aramaic was the lingua franca of the Assyrian Empire. The question of whether the implied linguistic continuity should be labelled "Aramaean" or "Assyrian" is not meaningful.

I readily accept that there is an ethnic difference between Levantine and N Iraqi Christians. It still makes sense to group them under "Syriac Christans", and then develop coverage of subgroups simply based on ethnographic literature. The same way it makes ethnographic sense to group Native Americans in the United States. Nobody claims these are even remotely ethnically related other than via Paleo-Indians 15kya or so. It still makes sense as a starting point before getting into serious ethnographic detail. But this is impossible to do while the flower of their youth is shouting at you from their moms' basements in western suburbs. --dab (𒁳) 06:15, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

The key arguments of panbabylonism have been rejected in mainstream historiography. I showed you lots of sources for that :P I understand your reluctance to take arms against a sea of assyrian nationalists.--Monochrome_Monitor 20:47, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

sigh, we agree on the "Panbabylonianism" part I think. It's a semantic problem. You have to be, and remain throughout, aware that "Panbabylonianism"=Astralkult. If you succumb to the suggestive interpretation of "Panbabylonianism"="mostly all taken from Babylon", which the term does not mean, then it also becomes false that it has been rejected.--dab (𒁳) 09:40, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

My interpretation of Panbabylonianism is both AstralKult and Bible-Babel. I think you're wrong about "mostly all taken". For one, that's not what Bible-Babel is about. It's more like "all of it is stolen". For two, the notion that Hebrew religion is Mesopotamian in origin has its roots in defunct hyperdiffusionist theories. The Hebrew religion is Canaanite in origin-it's indigenous to Canaan. This misconception is that the similarities between Mesopotamian and Canaanite religion are due to borrowing or contact. They are actually due primarily to a common origin in Semitic religion- the difference is Assyro-Babylonians recorded their ideas first.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Monochrome Monitor (talk • contribs)

Alright. As I said, I am sure we will basically agree, already as we are both ready to be led by the actual evidence. Here is my general view (I am not an ANE scholar, nor has this been an area I invested a lot of effort in, so my view is certainly open to review).

• The Astralkult thing is a 19th-century red herring.
• "Hebrew religion" is Canaanite, already because the Hebrews are Canaanites. The Hebrew Bible gives a valuable albeit heavily filtered/redacted account of "Hebrew religion". The core theology (Yahweh, El, Elohim, etc.) is all Canaanite. <-- this is the part where I agree that "Hebrew religion is Canaanite". This concerns the 8th and 7th centuries BC or so.
• A lot of mythological elements in the Torah (not the core, perhaps, but much of the most iconic stuff, as in Moses, Joseph, Noah, etc.) is obviously Mesopotamian in origin or inspiration. That's just a pedestrian observation about cultural contact and has nothing to do with "stealing". I do not agree that parallels between, say, Moses and Sargon of Akkad are somehow due to parallel evolution of some Proto-Semitic mytheme. This is not how mythology works. Especially seeing Mesopotamia and the Levant were within easy travelling distance throughout the Bronze Age. This isn't "hyperdiffusionism" in my book ("hyperdiffusionism" would be, e.g. Buddhist influence on the Druids, or stuff of such calibre)
• Second Temple Judaism (5th century BC) was a project to re-model elements of inherited Hebrew religion after the template of Babylonian religion. The Torah basically consists of Hebrew ("Canaanite") oral tradition heavily edited to conform with Babylonian templates.
• The entire thing was once again re-interpreted to conform with Greek philosophy (Platonism) in Hellenistic Judaism (3rd century BC). Once the entire Hebrew tradition had been re-cast in Hellenistic terms, Christianity is little more than a logical extrapolation of the process.

--dab (𒁳) 19:17, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Comparative mythology can explain some of the parallels, and others are explained by Mesopotamian influence. (I don't like calling it Babylonian/Assyrian per se since it's just as likely Sumerian. They all sort of blended together in Old Assyria.) I'm not familiar with the Sargon of Akkad parallels, but I'd reckon Moses can be compared to lots of other ancient figures. And Jesus has stunning parallels with Sol Invictus, Dionysis, and Mithra.--Monochrome_Monitor 17:48, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Sure, "Mespopotamian". It just happened to by "Babylonian" in the 6th century BC when the cultural contact was taking place. The "Sargon-Moses" mytheme just concerns the oddly specific "was picked up floating in a river in a reed-basked as a baby". Of course Christ is a grand synthesis of Tammuz-Dionysus-Sol-Invictus, and of course the Church fathers were not only aware of this but perfectly fine with it too. --dab (𒁳) 19:53, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Never heard the reed basket bit. Oh yes that's very specific. But lets talk about important shit. What in your view is the most psuedohistoric assyria article? In my view Assyrian continuity needs serious work.--Monochrome_Monitor 14:33, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

On second though I think it would make sense to start on Assyrians and not use the assyrian nationalist definition of self-identifying chaldeans/arameans as assyrians, but rather to assyrians as a distinct group of neo-aramaic speaking iraqi christians.--Monochrome_Monitor 14:52, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

==Category:Habitat maps has been nominated for discussion==

Category:Habitat maps, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. DexDor ^(talk) 05:37, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

You have recently removed the Persian spelling from the article, there are primary sources for that name from Seljuq era, if you still support removing the Persian spelling, you are expected to take part in the discussion in Talk:Seljuk_Empire. -- Kouhi (talk) 12:00, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

no, you are expected to cite these primary sources before inserting material. I have no objection to "Persian spellings". I have objections to uncited material, per Wikipedia policy. --dab (𒁳) 13:01, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Siyasatnama is a book in Persian, written in Seljuq era by Nizam_al-Mulk who himself was the vizier of Seljuq Empire. Is that enough? There's also Khaqani's Diwan which was composed in the Seljuq era. These are two primary sources. Can I use them in the article? -- Kouhi (talk) 13:45, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm asking because these are primary sources and using primary sources is prohibited in most cases. -- Kouhi (talk) 14:07, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

You don't understand. Of course it will be enough. What I want you to do is, find a published edition of Siyasatnama, locate the form you are interested in in this edition, and cite the edition with page in a footnote in the Seljuk Empire page. The problem is not that your reference isn't potentially useful. The problem is that you haven't done the required editorial work to properly bring up the citation at the relevant place. You cannot cite "Siyasatnama" as "a work". This work survives in manuscripts, right? So, are you citing a specific manuscript? Which one? which folium? Or, even better, are you citing a scholarly edition of one or even several manuscripts? Very good, then cite it, with its proper bibliographic data, and tell us which page in the edition we you want us to look at. Your primary source would be a specific manuscript. If you tell us you found a manuscript of the work in your garden, yes, we will be kind of puzzled. But if the manuscript has already been edited and published, you are actually citing the edition, i.e. the secondary work of a scholar who has looked at the manuscript. This will be perfectly fine. --dab (𒁳) 15:53, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Dab,

I come across you after reading part of the articles on Tingri -- articles which put my teeth on edge from the very first sentence.

I know nothing about the topic and am not particularly interested in it. I simply bumped into it while paging through Chinese mountains. I am, however, interested in language, meaning, and honesty. As a teenager, I waited eagerly for each successive volume of George Orwell's diaries to come off the press.

Some writing simply screams dishonesty. Sadly this is the case with a good deal of Wikipedia.

You seem to be doing the right sort of thing and fairly well, and I offer my very best wishes.

David Lloyd-Jones (talk) 00:59, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

thank you. Surely, you mean Tengri? Or perhaps Tengrism? These are plagued by a small number of persistent "Türkic" nationalist trolls. But I do not see a connection to "Chinese mountains". Perhaps you mean Tingri County? But I do not seem to have edited that page before. --dab (𒁳) 13:41, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Mongolian studies. Since you had some involvement with the Mongolian studies redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. RekishiEJ (talk) 06:19, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Good additions, but they need citing; Moon is a featured article, and an uncited section could jeopardise that. Serendi^podous 20:24, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

diff. --dab (𒁳) 09:29, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Um, yes? Your additions are uncited. That's what I was saying. Serendi^podous 09:33, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

it took me a minute to figure out what edits you were referring too. It was about 600 edits ago for me. I didn't complain about your not providing context, I just provided the relevant diff for future reference. Afaics, my edits were mostly a re-arrangement of pre-existing material. You are within your rights to intelligently challenge any unreferenced statement of course, regardless of whether it was added by me or not, I don't really see the article being "featured" as having any bearing on that ("featured" status is pretty loosely correlated to actual article quality as far as I can tell) --dab (𒁳) 11:14, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm trying to finally move the page Semitic people to Semitic race. Care to back me up?--Monochrome_Monitor 05:13, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

• of course. Semitic peoples and Semitic people to be disambiguation between Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, Semitic_languages#Semitic-speaking_peoples and Semitic race. --dab (𒁳) 09:56, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Done. I'll be reverted imminently. :)--Monochrome_Monitor 01:17, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Ethnic subgroups. Since you had some involvement with the Ethnic subgroups redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Prisencolin (talk) 05:13, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Would you please add these websites to WP:BLACKLIST?

• and its mirror [http://s155239215.onlinehome.us/]
• [http://www.hunmagyar.org/] (it looks like a sister website, very similar content)

I don't understand why some editors still use that turkicworld.org as a source. It's a personal and nationalistic website full of misrepresented, misleading, mistranslated and falsified sources/contents. For example, There is a falsified version of Angela Marcantonio's works on this website. Compare the Original work "The Indo-European language family: questions about its status" (pdf link) with [http://web.archive.org/web/20161023065309/http://s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/40_Language/MarcantonioA2009IELanguageFamilyEn.htm turkicworld's version]. It's funny how this turkicworld guy adds "Türk" and "Türkic" to every content which he falsified/misrepresented/mistranslated them. Plus, that website is related to Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Tirgil34. It seems same person (or a team) is behind them. --Wario-Man (talk) 06:57, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

This guy is still here? He has been doing this for the best part of a decade now. Your request is certainly reasonable and I have gone ahead and added the sites to the blacklist

I am not using my admin buttons much these days, so I may be ignoring some red tape here (my admin account dates to 2004, when it was "no big deal" and you were trusted to just do whatever is good for the health of the project). If my addition is reverted you will just have to take the bureaucratic route.

--dab (𒁳) 09:10, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your help, I appreciate it. Seems he will never abandon English WP. His SPI case started since March 2012 and people still report him and his sockpuppet army. I think he's a paid pov-pusher and ethno-centrist troll, because he's very active outside WP too (YouTube, anthropology/racialist/HBD websites, history forums, and even gaming communities). He spams "turkicworld" stuffs everywhere. Looks like a nationalistic agenda (pro-Turkic, anti-European, anti-IE, pseudo-science, pseudo-history and racist). Unfortunately, there are other editors (not related to him) who think that his plague website is a reliable work and they use his materials on En-WP articles. Blacklist is useful, but I hope people don't try to copy-paste his texts. Because I encountered them many times. Recent examples were on Kanasubigi, Islamicisation and Turkicisation of Xinjiang and Kingdom of Qocho. --Wario-Man (talk) 12:49, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Please help me with overhauling Assyrian continuity. I have already done the intro with sourcing. In general we need to delete the bullshit "they always considered themselves assyrians" and the ridiculous characterization of Westerners denying their indigenous identity when it was westerners who gave it to them. We need to have a section on how the term assyria was used- geographically, endonym, exonym, referring to mosulites, etc. Once again PLEASE HELP--Monochrome_Monitor 05:45, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

I am not sure this should even be a different page from Assyrian nationalism. The question is very interesting at its core, iirc it boils down to the similarity of the names "Syria" and "Assyria", which have been conflated since the effing Early Iron Age, so there is very little point in "resolving" the question by studying Bronze Age etymologies of the names. This "continuity" crap is just classical "antiquity frenzy", overplaying the actual continuity you will find in pretty much every place in the Old World. If you were so inclined, you could make the very same argument about "Swiss paleolithic continuity". The Swiss argument is not not made because it would be any less true but simply because people are less desperate to make it. --dab (𒁳) 05:26, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Oh yes. It's like saying the modern Britons are ancient Britons because the names are the same! We should merge. But seriously, I'm going to need you to do a bit of work here too. :P--Monochrome_Monitor 21:13, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

I have this bottom up approach, where I research the details for the sub-articles before I go on to tackle the fought-over "main" articles. But do let me know if you need me for something specific. --dab (𒁳) 19:59, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Ah, then a good starting place is Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, which Assyrian nationalists like to say is directly descended from Akkadian and emphasize "Akkadian inflections", forgetting that Aramaic in general, as well as Hebrew, have Akkadian words. Another good starting point is Simo Parpola and the Melammu Project. You may not have heard of him but he's a crazy person used as the prime source for Assyrianists.Without his citations articles on Assyrians would be near-bereft of psuedohistory.--Monochrome_Monitor 09:33, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

I'm trying to fix our history of Mesopotamia, which I now find problematic. I believe it confuses Assyrian civilization with Sumero-Akkadian civilization, and Assur with Assyria. This is something to do research on- because most of our sources are very old and date to the first or second waves of Assyriology. We have based our estimates on the age of Assur on archeology when Assur the Assyrian city was built on an older city. This would be like saying Judah began in the Bronze Age because that's when Jerusalem began- and yes, the Assyrian king list dates to 2500, but many don't believe the older kings can be seriously called "Assyrian"- ie it's a retroactive continuity. I'm going to recommend you some google books readings, modern ones on the history of Mesopotamia/Assyria. We need attention from an expert, and right now it seems our "experts" are "Assyrian" amateur historians. Again, please help and edit these pages. To-do:

• Merge Assyrian continuity to Assyrian nationalism
• Delete history of the Assyrian people and awful template
• Priority articles:
• Assyria
• Terms for Syriac Christians
• every period of Assyrian history- remove references to "assyrian people", frame any references to modern assyrians as a modern ethnoreligious group indigenous to the assyrian homeland region.
• pages on modern assyrian culture. remove or reliably source claims to possess elements of ancient Assyrian culture, ie the language and religion
• Battle of Ninevah- this is big because Assyrians try to downplay the destruction of Assyrian civilization and pretend its a biblical myth. Also they like saying the bible is assyrian (hence need to fix panbabylonism and make it about what its actually about- the astralkult and the bibel-babel controversy, but I know that doesn't bother you for some reason)
• delete references to parpola and treat Ancient and Modern Assyrians: A Scientific Analysis and other Assyrianist sources very carefully.

Another thing to look out for is attempts to make assyria near-equivalent to greater "mesopotamian" civilization. a key part of assyrianism is "national pride" at the greatness of assyria- but when it talks about that greatness it almost invariably claims Sumerian and Babylonian civilization as Assyrian. Wikipedia makes it seem as if assyrian civilization precedes akkadian and babylonian merely because of the assyrian king list which lists AKKADIAN kings in assur. The name Assyria was coined by a babylonian, before it was called subartu. Sorry about the disjointed ranting. Basically, two issues: 1. fake continuity 2. shitty chronology of civilizations and periods. I propose we treat mesopotamian history this way: Sumer in the south, then Akkad in the north. and sumero-akkadians built assur and its a city-state until the united sumero-akkadian empire ("old assyrian period"), division into assyria and babylon... etc.

This book is a must-read. --Monochrome_Monitor 17:36, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Hello,

Please note that TOTP based two-factor authentication is now available for all administrators. In light of the recent compromised accounts, you are encouraged to add this additional layer of security to your account. It may be enabled on your preferences page in the "User profile" tab under the "Basic information" section. For basic instructions on how to enable two-factor authentication, please see the developing help page for additional information. Important: Be sure to record the two-factor authentication key and the single use keys. If you lose your two factor authentication and do not have the keys, it's possible that your account will not be recoverable. Furthermore, you are encouraged to utilize a unique password and two-factor authentication for the email account associated with your Wikimedia account. This measure will assist in safeguarding your account from malicious password resets. Comments, questions, and concerns may be directed to the thread on the administrators' noticeboard. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:33, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

I don't really understand why you changed that article to be a redirect to a redirect... AnonMoos (talk) 01:52, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Because, developing the Mars symbol and Venus symbol pages, I noted that most of it was content overlap copy-pasted from astronomical symbol and astrological symbol. The history of the symbols should be discussed in context. After substracting that, there was very little content indeed to justify a standalone page. --dab (𒁳) 10:32, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

I misunderstood your question. Never mind, it was just a typo. --dab (𒁳) 10:34, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Hi Dbachmann.

A new user group, New Page Reviewer, has been created in a move to greatly improve the standard of new page patrolling. The user right can be granted by any admin at PERM. It is highly recommended that admins look beyond the simple numerical threshold and satisfy themselves that the candidates have the required skills of communication and an advanced knowledge of notability and deletion. Admins are automatically included in this user right.

It is anticipated that this user right will significantly reduce the work load of admins who patrol the performance of the patrollers. However,due to the complexity of the rollout, some rights may have been accorded that may later need to be withdrawn, so some help will still be needed to some extent when discovering wrongly applied deletion tags or inappropriate pages that escape the attention of less experienced reviewers, and above all, hasty and bitey tagging for maintenance. User warnings are available here but very often a friendly custom message works best.

If you have any questions about this user right, don't hesitate to join us at WT:NPR. (Sent to all admins).MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:47, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

I don't know why you made the edit you did on Shield of the Trinity. First, I doubt whether "econverso" is even a word. Second, as explained on the linked image page File:Trinity knight shield.jpg, according to the Michael Evans journal article, the text in the links connecting the outer nodes to each other reads "Non est • nec e converso", while the text along the links connecting the center node to the outer nodes reads "Est et e converso" -- and of the two, the "Est e converso" text is more significant (the bidirectionality of the outer links wouldn't surprise anyone, while the bidirectionality of the central links might be a little surprising to some). AnonMoos (talk) 03:05, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

sorry, I only noted the nec e converso, I didn't see that the est also has e converso. It was probably fine as it stood. For the Middle Latin spelling econverso see e.g. here --dab (𒁳) 10:29, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

as for "surprising", I don't think that given "A is B" the statement "B is A" can be considered surprising (but neither is "B is not A" given "A is not B", the surprise is entirely in the lack of transitivity, i.e. "A is not C" given that "A is B and B is C"). --dab (𒁳) 11:31, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Dbachmann -- Google Books doesn't work well on my home computer; I'll try to view the link later on another computer. However, the phrase "e converso" makes sense as a preposition which governs the ablative case ("ex") followed by a neuter participle in the ablative case ("conversum" nominative, "converso" ablative). As a single word, it doesn't make much sense (though apparently sometimes abbreviated into that form).

Also, the surprise you're referring to is that the diagram as a whole is inconsistent, if the assertions are interpreted in simplest logical form. However theologically, "the Son is not the Holy Spirit" and the other five negatives of that type are all rather uncontroversial. By contrast, some who would accept "the Holy Spirit is God" would be a little surprised by "God is the Holy Spirit". That's why a few forms of the diagram have the EST consistently going toward the center, even if the text has to be mostly upside-down (see File:Trinidad-Anglican-Episcopal-Coat-of-Arms.svg etc.). AnonMoos (talk) 18:01, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

The three texts on the perimeter links unequivocally read econverso rather than e converso (i.e. there is no space). The texts on the radiating links are, as the description for the image file notes, "obscured"; but on the bottom (vertical) link the letter e and the scribal abbreviation for con are both quite clear, again with no space between them. I would suggest that the caption is changed back to econverso. GrindtXX (talk) 15:32, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

GrindtXX: the spacing may make it look like "econverso", but "econverso" is not really a word in the Latin language -- as the manuscript scribe and most of the original readers of the manuscript probably would have been aware. It was this shared background knowledge which made it possible to abbreviate by omitting word space, but a literalistic transcription would convey a misleading impression to modern readers who do not share such knowledge. I don't see how adding a word space is too different from resolving the scribal abbreviations... AnonMoos (talk) 18:01, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Econverso may not be good classical Latin, but it did have currency in the middle ages. It appears in Niermeyer's Mediae Latinitatis lexicon minus (2002 edn.) as an adverb meaning "conversely"; and the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, under convertere, cites six instances of econverso in use (from Adam of Balsham, Michael Scot, William of Ockham, John Gower, and two archival sources), as well as others that do split the words (see here). When you get to open Dbachmann's Google Books link, you will see that that is quoting a passage from Stephen Langton that uses the word three times within a discussion of the nature of the Trinity. I would see adhering to the spacing in a quotation as equivalent to adhering to archaic or eccentric spelling. GrindtXX (talk) 22:09, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

It's no big deal guys. GrindtXX is right, econverso is perfectly fine in Middle Latin. AnonMoos is also right, you wouldn't spell it that way in classical Latin. It's up to the editor how to normalize manuscript spelling. Both choices, e converso and econverso are valid, you would just try to make sure that your overall approach within your edition is consistent. I didn't mean to start a controversy on a non-issue, and I am happy with spelling it either way. --dab (𒁳) 09:16, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Dbachmann -- When I viewed the Google books link on a library computer, I got "You have either reached a page that is unavailable for viewing or reached your viewing limit for this book". That was probably what was also happening on my home computer (only the message didn't display too clearly there).

GrindtXX -- You may have some valid points, but I don't really see the "Shield of the Trinity" article as a suitable place for displaying raw medievalisms / scribalisms (or for explaining them at length), since the many of the readers of that article will have difficulty enough with clear basic simple Latin... AnonMoos (talk) 14:55, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Doesn't matter, it was just an example of a scholarly (Ashgate Publishing) work on Middle Latin which normalized nec e converso as nec enconverso that I googled. I'm just saying that it's in use, not that it's the only right way of doing it.

On your point to GrindtXX, I agree, and I suppose the underlying issue here is that we have no decent coverage on Middle Latin anywhere. We seem to have a fair summary at Medieval Latin, plus there is Scribal abbreviation which is also fair enough and useful, but that's still very limited considering this is an entire field of study. --dab (𒁳) 06:42, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

I must ask that you immediately revert your edit to Pizzagate to the prior consensus version - you edited through protection against the clearly expressed consensus of editors that the word "false" or "debunked" must be in the disambiguation page. Your interpretation of policy is not supported by that consensus, and if you refuse to self-revert, I will open a thread on WP:ANI, as your edit violates the page protection policy. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 17:40, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi. I have reverted your edit to Pizzagate, as the page is under full protection with a request to seek prior consensus for any changes. I'm sure you didn't realise that at the time, but admins should not edit through full protection to make their own preferred changes. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:14, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

you are right, I thought it was semiprotected. It's been a long time since I have even seen a fully protected article (and should know better than tread in parts where there are such). --dab (𒁳) 18:47, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

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From the icy Canajian north; to you and yours! FWiW Bzuk (talk) 14:00, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

I thought you should know, this edit of yours from September seems to have introduced references (<ref="WP:BOMBARD"/>) that aren't displaying right. —suzukaze (t・c) 11:27, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

thanks for letting me know, I think I've fixed it now. --dab (𒁳) 14:10, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Dbachmann, this article mentions Godefroy Durand (born 1832; died later than 1890) was a French draughtsman and engraver. has other information. Since you created the article you might have more information on the specific details on birth, place and nationality, and adapt accordingly. Thank you for your time. Lotje (talk) 08:05, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

I see. Commons claims he was British and was born "18.." (consistent with 1832) and died 1895 (consistent with "later than 1890"). My information is simply taken from the MB page linked. This seems to be the best "source" we have at this point, it's not like commons feels compelled to cite any sort of references for its "Creator" pages.

VIAF has the following information, collated from various online repositories (without any particular credibility):

Durand, Godefroy, 1832-187. [Sudoc ABES, France National Library of France]

Durand, Godefroy 1832-post 1890 [ISNI, National Library of Poland]

Durand, Godefroy 1832-1895 [German National Library]

Durand, Godefroy (French painter and draftsman, born 1832) [Getty Research Institute]

There seems to be consensus on "born 1832", and uncertainty regarding the year of death, with "post 1890" the most credible. He seems to have been Belgian by birth, active in France before 1870, and active in Britain after 1870, in which sense he is a "British" or "Victorian" artist. His life after 1890 seems to be completely unknown, and "1895" is probably just a misadaptation of "post-1890" (misinterpreted as "died at some point in the 1890s"). This reference has "1832-c.1910". --dab (𒁳) 14:17, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Hey Dbachmann. I think you're recent editing, with a note on top of the Psalm pages where numbering differences occur, is a good idea. But, at least to my eyes the expression "Greek (Vulgata)" looks like it might imply that the Vulgate is written in Greek. Would you object if I switched the wording on both posts to say "Greek / Vulgate" instead? Unless I'm misreading your intent somehow and there's a good reason for the phrasing being the way it is. I know my way around the Hebrew psalms a lot better than the Greek/Latin Psalms, so I thought I'd check first. Regardless, it's good to see that someone else is paying some attention to the individual-Psalm articles. Cheers!Alephb (talk) 09:09, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

I am not objecting at all, and I see the problem. Of course I just wanted to express that the so-called "Greek numbering" is the one used by the Vulgata, including all the medieval manuscript images used to decorate the Psalms articles, in the hope that people might pay more attention to placing these on the correct page. --dab (𒁳) 14:21, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Please let me know if you are. I knew I had one somewhere but I've lost it. Doug Weller talk 15:08, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

they have found us out my preciouss... always burrowing, prodding, nasty hobbitses. --dab (𒁳) 18:27, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Indo-Aryans&redirect=no https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Indo-Iranians&action=history — Preceding unsigned comment added by Callofworld (talk • contribs) 14:15, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

I have no idea what you are trying to say, please make a complete sentence. --dab (𒁳) 09:17, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

...falls on the 18th, right? This edit feels like vandalism to me, but the longstanding date was also unsourced. Can't look for a source right now so I figured I should run it by someone with a clue. -165.234.252.11 (talk) 17:43, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

I have no idea, we should just tag it with {{cn}} either way. --dab (𒁳) 18:57, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2017). This first issue is being sent out to all administrators, if you wish to keep receiving it please subscribe. Your feedback is welcomed.

Administrator changes

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Guideline and policy news

• A discussion to workshop proposals to amend the administrator inactivity policy at Wikipedia talk:Administrators has been in process since late December 2016.
• Wikipedia:Pending changes/Request for Comment 2016 closed with no consensus for implementing Pending changes level 2 with new criteria for use.
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• When performing some administrative actions the reason field briefly gave suggestions as text was typed. This change has since been reverted so that issues with the implementation can be addressed. (T34950)
• Following the latest RfC concluding that Pending Changes 2 should not be used on the English Wikipedia, an RfC closed with consensus to remove the options for using it from the page protection interface, a change which has now been made. (T156448)
• The Foundation has announced a new community health initiative to combat harassment. This should bring numerous improvements to tools for admins and CheckUsers in 2017.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee released a response to the Wikimedia Foundation's statement on paid editing and outing.

Obituaries

• JohnCD (John Cameron Deas) passed away on 30 December 2016. John began editing Wikipedia seriously during 2007 and became an administrator in November 2009.

13:38, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Man, I miss the days when Wikipedia used to be the "encyclopedia that slashdot wrote". I am well aware that online harassment can be a real problem, but now we have a "Board" who is so oblivious as to write with no apparent sarcasm in the vocabulary of pure Orwellianism (Board's Statement on Healthy Community Culture, Inclusivity, and Safe Spaces). They might as well have written "we are meddling busybodies and you will have to route around us if you are going to get anything done". No, not "as well", of course, as that would have exhibited self-awareness. I am an old fart by internet standards, I was socialized online in 1993, and I am not going to pick a fight with these people. I'll just try to keep working on the encyclopedia as long as they manage not to completely break the system, and quietly hope that there will be enough people with an engineer mindset working on this to counterbalance the growing ballast of people with an apparatchik mindset that are invariably going to accrete in any bureaucracy. It wasn't avoidable that the project was going to be poisoned by this. It's still sad to see this has happened. --dab (𒁳) 09:06, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

One thing I do conclude from this is that I will strongly recommend people stop donating to Wikimedia in the future. Wikipedia needs money for hosting costs. And that should be it. If there is any leftover to pay for Boards and Committees and their "community advocacy", this means that the Foundation has definitely too much money, and needs to be starved of it. As soon as we get server outages again and every cent has to go into paying for infrastructure, the project may also regain its sanity as a grass-roots community effort. --dab (𒁳) 09:11, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Safe spaces? All the more reason to be glad that I stay away. (Season's Greetings, old friend!) rudra (talk) 00:55, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

happy ... Equirria, rudra :)

I revert you for the reasons explained on talk, TL;DR - we need more discussion first, because if a move is needed, we have to consider some other names / splits / merger too, first. It's a complicated mess. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:08, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

I have replied on the article talk page. --dab (𒁳) 11:43, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi Dab, I would like to cordially invite you to join Wikiquote as a contributor. Will you be able to start a new Wikiquote article on The New Cambridge History of India. Surely you have already read some of those books and as such it should be a nice intellectual goal to set for 2017. If you are unsure how to proceed you can look for my creation q:Millennium Prize Problems as guidance which is basically a series of mathematical problems as I am sure you are already aware. Some redlinks (there) which might interest you include: Vijaynagar, Mughal, Rajput, Deccan, Punjab, Maratha and other q:Category:States of India. Solomon7968 12:45, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Bovis scale is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bovis scale until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:42, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

I find it remarkable that you would create an article about such a highly esoteric matter, without adding any of the reservations present in the variant of this article in German, while a discussion on the talk page of Daniele Ganser and in fact the whole article are deemed unnecessary. lmaxmai (talk) 17:28, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, this was ten (10) years ago. German Wikipedia didn't even mention the term at the time. I came across it, wanted to look it up, and noted that Wikipedia was unaware of it, so I tried to quickly research it. --dab (𒁳) 06:43, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Please know the formatting policies, despite being in Wiktionary for thirteen years. Check especially یارا for example, see some of the things I've done there. – AWESOME meeos ！ * (chōmtī hao /t͡ɕoːm˩˧.tiː˩˧ haw˦˥/) 23:29, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

yeah, I haven't really spent thirteen years on Wiktionary, the prevalent passive-aggressive attitude of editors put me off during a number of years. My impression had been that the atmosphere had generally improved, so I started contributing a little more recently.

I spent several hours researching a quite difficult word. You appear to have done some copyediting, some of it deteriorating the information I had given. Then you inserted the comment "cleanup Everything. This is atrocious". This really reminds me of the good old days of Wiktionary with ocd gatekeepers obsessing about template formats and ill-advised guidelines (often misrepresented as "policy") but completely ignoring quality of content.

I can hope that you represent an archaism in the project, but if the old attitude is coming back I'll just stay away for a few more years. As will probably most of the editors who could contribute actual expertise. --dab (𒁳) 09:53, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

It's all fixed now :-) – AWESOME meeos ！ * (chōmtī hao /t͡ɕoːm˩˧.tiː˩˧ haw˦˥/) 03:10, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@Dbachmann: Please forgive Awesomemeeos's behavior. He is not representative of Wiktionary at large and his way of interaction has been recognized as problematic multiple times. —suzukaze (t・c) 04:12, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

@Awesomemeeos: Please read the situation. —suzukaze (t・c) 04:12, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

I note from the article history that in 2012 you tried to convert the article Godwulf into a redirect. Since you might then be considered an 'involved' editor, I am notifying you that I have initiated an AfD for this article at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Godwulf. Agricolae (talk) 19:33, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

{{Db-csd-notice-custom}} WWGB (talk) 06:58, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, please take care who you template. I commend you for dealing with copy-paste moves, but I am just the guy who created the redirect back in 2006, no need to tell me about it. --dab (𒁳) 10:24, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Hello. If you didn't notice this topic, here's a link. It might be helpful to you. .

Also, don't mind the people pushing Serbian POV. Tesla was born in Croatia, them ignoring sources won't change that. Here's the link:

. 141.136.223.49 (talk) 19:07, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Your edit is correct. Tesla was born in Kingdom of Croatia which was then a part of Austrian Empire. Everyone agrees he was born in Smiljan. Smiljan was then a part of Kingdom of Croatia. Kingdom of Croatia was in that time separated on "civilian" and "military" administration. The source says everything there is to know: "After many pleas from Jelecic, in 1850 the King's proclamation, which was signed by all 8 Austrian ministers, was finally announced...For Military Frontier, the King decided that it will remain within its present territory. However, it will with, Croatia and Slavonia, constitute a single land with disaggregated provincial and military administration, and representation." Croatia,Slavonia and Military Frontier constitute a single land - Kingdom of Croatia. However Kingdom of Croatia has disaggregated provincial (Croatia,Slavonia) and military administration (Military Frontier). While it is correct to say that Tesla was born in Military Frontier, it is also correct that he was born in Kingdom of Croatia. It is not correct to say that Tesla was not born in Croatia, but he was born in Military Frontier, because Military Frontier was a part of Croatia. I referenced a link to the source with Tesla's statement "I was born in Croatia". With this sources there isn't much to discuss, but if you continue, you'll find how difficult it is to deal with some people who "guard" the idea that Military Frontier is something completely separated from Croatia, while they will provide no sources. 141.136.223.49 (talk) 19:21, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

The problem is not with the facts. Yes, Tesla was a Serb born in the Kingdom of Croatia. The problem is with (a) Serbian editors who want to avoid all mention of "Croatia", (b) Croatian editors who want the article to read "Croatia, Croatia, Croatia, and btw, Croatia", and (c) the effect the two groups have on each other. The solution would be to either grow up and act like adults, or alternatively take a step back and let non-Serbian non-Croats do the job of presenting the very simple facts of the matter. Of course neither is going to happen, and I have learned to be relaxed about this. --dab (𒁳) 06:55, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, relax and Tesla will lead the way. ---Sluzzelin talk 07:18, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

I agree about the birthplace per sources I had referenced. That's an established fact and no one can dispute that. However, I still haven't found any credible primary sources about Tesla's ethnicity. I don't think that the problem can be solved by asking others to grow up. It can be only solved by credible secondary sources that are based on primary sources. Even contemporary newspaper articles that I've been posting on talk page (and that they have been deleting) are claiming Tesla to be Croat/Serb. People will continue to argue until we have sources that we can all agree upon. I tried to start a discussion where we could start dealing with the question by gathering all sources on Tesla's ethnicity, but some people didn't want that so they have banned that discussion. You can see it here: . Look at what the sources claim: Serb, Croat, Austrian, Slavic, Hungarian, Yugoslav, Romanian.

Look at what one editor said: "Stop cherrypicking". I was trying to gather all sources on one place and I was cherrypicking? Isn't cherrypicking exactly the opposite, to gather only the sources that benefit your opinion?

So, yeah, they don't even allow sources to be posted on the talk page. I guess that some people could draw their own conclusions from the sources, instead of blindly reading the article, so the best thing is to hide the sources from them. ;) 89.164.196.4 (talk) 20:58, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

I attempted to introduce into the article the fact that Tesla was born in Croatia, and I was reverted. I did not attempt to discuss his ethnicity, afaict it is undisputed he was an ethnic Serb, descended from immigrants that came to Croatia one or two century earlier from the general region of Montenegro (maybe in the 1680s? I did not research it and made no claim either way).

It seems uncontroversial to me to call him an ethnic Serb as (a) his father was an orthodox priest, and (b) he joined a Serbian student club when he was in university.

This is what the article has, and I have no problem with it and I never even tried to discuss this. So I have to ask why you are taking this up with me. The only thing I complained about was the refusal to mention the fact that he was born and grew up in Habsburg Croatia. --dab (𒁳) 11:41, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Tesla's connections to Croatia are banned from the article by a certain group of editors. But that doesn't matter much with sources published on talk page. Everyone is free to draw their own conclusion from that sources. In my opinion the sources are decisive, so there's not that much to discuss. However, your attempt was stopped with bad faith in mind, in my opinion. There were indeed numerous discussions about Tesla's birthplace, but there are new sources which weren't reviewed back them. The most important is the source which tells us about the kings proclamation. Then there's the Tesla's own statement that he was born in Croatia.

Sorry to say, but Tesla's ethnicity is very much disputed. Orthodox faith does not mean a Serbian ethnicity, nor there is a such source that claims that. Funny how some editors have pushed that as an established fact. Even the source which would claim that in the 19th century the most orthodox people were Serbs, that we could not use to prove that Tesla was a Serb. That would be synthesis. Was there a Croatian or Montenegrin student club, but he preferred Serbian? Even in that case we can't deduce his ethnicity without synthesis. It far too subjective to deduce his ethnicity by the student club he joined, song he wished on his funeral and so on, and that's exactly the problem and the cause of all disputes. Until real sources are found the disputes will persist. I tried to search for the real sources. I found 19th century newspaper articles claiming Tesla to be both Croat/Serb (you can see them in the history of talk page as they are deleting them constantly). So even then his ethnicity was disputed. It seems that Tesla was a supporter of Yugoslavia so he didn't want to declare himself as one or another. He thought that all south slavs are one and the same nation. According to that we should call Tesla a yugosalv-american. I could find numerous sources to confirm that was his opinion. By declaring him as a Serbs the article actually goes against his own opinions, as he had never declared himself to be a Serb nor Croat. Serbians are very rigid to declare Tesla to be Serb as they are using him as their brand.

So to solve all the disputed, I tried to find real sources/documents that would speak of Tesla's nationality/ethnicity. Unfortunately that's was too hard and with such bad faith from other editors I didn't want to waste my time. I researched consensuses from US and Austrian Empire. I found a ship manifest from when Tesla emigrated to US. He's mentioned there as Sweedish, but he didn't fill that by himself so there was an obvious confusion. Maybe there would be more info on his immigration papers. It would be great to find those, or to find tesla on US censuses.There's also an Austrian census that had "ethnicity" column but that was before Tesla's time. It would be great to find Tesla's father on that census. So, as you see there are documents that can be found, but no one has the time to do that, and until that is done, the disputes will persist. Well, not that much because a group of editors managed to push pro-Serbian POV to the article and they block everyone who tries to temper with that, as they did with you. Basically, everyone who tries to question their POV is one against five of them so he stands no chance. They are discussing in bad faith and ignoring sources, some of them are directly lying and using personal attacks. For instance this post goes against Tesla's statement and the secondary source which directly quotes the kings proclamation, but that doesn't matter to that editor. His own opinion matters more. 141.138.51.93 (talk) 13:45, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry if you are not interested. I contacted you because you were worked over like me and other editors by the same group of people. Ok, good luck to you. Bye. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.138.51.93 (talk) 13:48, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

oh, I am interested, I am just trying to see both sides of a dispute. Also I spent a lot of time with this kind of problem back in 2007 or so. I still support Wikipedians sinking their time into fixing nationalist problems, but I also feel that I have done my bit and then some. --dab (𒁳) 07:43, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

That kind of problems can only be fixed with sources. Well, even that isn't enough to some editors who would really like if the history happened the way they imagine it. Let's take Tesla's birthplace problem for example. There were many pointless discussions ans a lot of time wasted, yet nothing was accomplished until I found good primary sources (Tesla's own statement that he was born in Croatia). Even then, some pro-Serbian editors were trying to claim that Tesla was not born in Croatia, against his own statement. That's not surprising when every historian in Serbia is saying so. Funny how no one of that historians mentions Tesla's own statement that he was born in Croatia. Then they managed to use Wikipedia rules in bad faith, so they claimed that we can't believe Tesla's statement. He might have lied...or so. Although this is technically true, it's done in bad faith in my opinion. It's against Occam's razor principle. They can not claim that Tesla lied/didn't mean/didn't know where was he born or that he was mistaken. That's a too elaborate to claim without a source that would back that. Ok, so I accepted that and I invested a lot more time to battle with their main argument, that Tesla was born in Military Frontier which was not a part of Croatia, but a separate entity. I spent days investigating four sources to prove that Military Frontier was a part of Croatia, and I finally found a great secondary source that quotes the king's proclamation about the status of Croatia and Military Frontier at that time. It directly says that Military Frontier, Croatia and Slavonia constitute a single land. However, as you saw, even that wasn't enough for some editors who were still claiming to you in your discussion, that Military Frontier is something different than Croatia, against Tesla's statement and against king's proclamation. This is in my opinion done in bad faith. They did not point you to see the sources for yourself as I did in my initial post here on your talk page. They did not want to discuss. They wanted to get rid of you. They also did one more thing in bad faith. The source with the kings proclamation was unknown at the time we had a RfC on Tesla's birthplace. So there's a basis for another RfC, but no one of them is going to open it, since they are happy with their viewpoint in the article. They are ignoring the strongest source. In my opinion we should have a new RfC on Tesla's birthplace. You asked why I'm taking this with you. I don't know why, but I took up the job to inform everyone about the sources, since they are trying to hide them. That's not an easy job to do. I don't want to bore anyone that's not interested to tackle this issue, and most people aren't. Well, that's probably better, because some issues can't be solved without proper sources and I know how hard is to find sources on Tesla's ethnicity/nationality. My contribution here are the sources on Tesla's birthplace. In my opinion that issue is now properly solved.

I saw that you tried to tackle with Tesla's nationality, but I think that your view on that topic is a bit simplistic. For example, I found sources that are claiming that Austro-Hungary had national and local citizenship. Another thing is that Austro-Hungary appeared to the outside countries as "Austria". Everyone who went abroad was an "Austrian citizen", although they could be Hungarian. So Tesla's statement that he is disowning Austrian citizenship doesn't mean much. He could have had Hungarian national citizenship, but he would still disown Austrian citizenship. There's also a local citizenship and the matter is a bit more complex when you start reading about how citizenship was arranged withing Austro-Hungary. Well, a lot of relations were a bit complicated withing Austro-Hungary. 141.136.246.1 (talk) 22:12, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

• Celts (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

You protected this article quite some time ago. Would you mind decreasing to PC1 or unprotecting? --Izno (talk) 16:48, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

It's up to you, I'm not watching it. I guess a reasonable rule of thumb is that if you are reducing protection you should also watch the article for some time to get a feeling if it begins to deteriorate more rapidly. --dab (𒁳) 07:40, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I can't unprotect it, which is why I'm asking you. :D --Izno (talk) 12:01, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

In my opinion the Celts article is on a topic that will continue to benefit from indefinite semiprotection. IPs who have ideas for improvement can use {{editsemiprotect}}. The last time the article was unprotected was in the fall of 2010. During that period it had as many as 50 bad edits a month. EdJohnston (talk) 20:56, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I tend to agree, but I do not have authority over "my" protection just because I happened to click the button historically. If you want wider admin attention for this, just post it to Wikipedia:Requests for page protection (which I think is also used for requests for unprotection). --dab (𒁳) 05:10, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

WP:UNPROTECT requires I ask the protecting admin first if he is still active however long ago the original protection may have been, probably out of some sense to avoid a admins taking contravening administrative action. --Izno (talk) 12:15, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

I see, sorry, this explains it. This is a stupid rule imho and "unwikilike", but then I am a fossil and would probably consider most of Wikipedia "unwikilike" by now. --dab (𒁳) 08:53, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

@EdJohnston: The kind of vandalism that I can see looks routine (or, at least in one case, essentially genre-warring). I won't push the case, but as it is, there's currently a semi-prot-edit-request on the talk page which is so-far unserviced in the past week (mind you, it has seen some discussion). --Izno (talk) 12:15, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

"Celts" will always attract stupid or vandalistic edits, and in my opinion it can remain semiprotected indefinitely. This is just my opinion and I have no problem with being overruled, that is, as long as the process of "overruling" is transparent and ostensibly weighing pros and cons by looking at the actual evidence. I make no pretense of remaining involved in or keeping track of the countless articles I may have semiprotected over the years. --dab (𒁳) 08:53, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

There is currently some confusion as to whether the name of this article should be spelled with or without an umlaut, with the first sentence of the text comprehensively contradicting the article name. I have requested advice at Talk:Üetliberg#Name confusion. As you have previously (a very long time ago) commented on this subject, I'm making you aware of this, in case you wish to contribute. -- chris_j_wood (talk) 16:48, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi Dbachmann. A few years ago, you made this edit to an image description. While the image source indeed states it depicts Muhammad, I was wondering where you got "prohibiting intercalation" from. --HyperGaruda (talk) 18:40, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Good question, I think it was in the description at bnf.fr where the image came from, but I cannot be sure now, this will have to be researched (or treated as unsubstantiated). --dab (𒁳) 19:06, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

A few hours of browsing later and I've come across the original page on Commons. With some help of an 1879 English translation, I could pinpoint what the page was discussing: intercalation before Islam, its prohibition and an introduction to the Indian calendar. The illustration is positioned specifically in the middle of a line quoting Muhammad, so I'd say the description is pretty much correct :) --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:48, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Great, please make a note of that for future reference! Thanks -- --dab (𒁳) 20:50, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Category:Homosexual people, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Bearcat (talk) 00:46, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Category:Medieval homosexual people, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Bearcat (talk) 00:50, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Medieval Asia. Since you had some involvement with the Medieval Asia redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:54, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Dab, can you please look at this section of the article and help determine which links need to go, some of which you also previously stated are unproven. That whole "Alexander" claim, you know.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 23:02, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

I've fixed it so you don't have to worry.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 01:22, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Template:Kosovo (UNMIK) has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Frietjes (talk) 16:34, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Wikipedia:What Wikipedia Is. Since you had some involvement with the Wikipedia:What Wikipedia Is redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Steel1943 (talk) 01:39, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Template:History of Armenia (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

This template was protected by you almost 10 years ago over a banned user edit warring the template. It's very likely that the user in question has left Wikipedia some time after the protection was made. Is it possible for you to unprotect the page? jd22292 (Jalen D. Folf) (talk) 04:25, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Category:German tribes, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:41, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Lists of all Georgian monarchs. Since you had some involvement with the Lists of all Georgian monarchs redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Steel1943 (talk) 20:07, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Hi, I'm Atsme. Dbachmann, thanks for creating Rama Setu (Ramayana)!

I've just tagged the page, using our page curation tools, as having some issues to fix. The article needs references.

The tags can be removed by you or another editor once the issues they mention are addressed. If you have questions, you can leave a comment on my talk page. Or, for more editing help, talk to the volunteers at the Teahouse.

^{Atsme📞📧} 11:13, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

We were editing Languages of Europe at the same time. When I saved it, I may have zapped several of your insertions of the word "Western". It's probably safer for me to let you fix it. —Anomalocaris (talk) 10:34, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I'm mostly done with my project on this page now. --dab (𒁳) 06:18, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Hello! I noticed that, back in 2005, you added the image at right to Wikimedia Commons of a cuneiform tablet listing the names of several Sumerian deities, but you did not provide a source for the information given on the page. I recently attempted to add this image to the article Sumerian religion, but another user insists that, per WP:VERIFIABILITY, the image cannot be used in the article unless I provide a citation to a reliable source that directly states what it is. I was wondering if you happened to have any recollection at all of where you found the information on the commons page with the image so that I may cite that source in the image caption in the article. --Katolophyromai (talk) 02:13, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

No recollection, but after all the ms. number is in the filename, so, Schoyen Collection MS 2272. --dab (𒁳) 06:21, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your help! I really appreciate it. --Katolophyromai (talk) 04:01, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

you are welcome -- although I am not sure the image would pass muster for "PD-Art" these days (the rationale is that it's a "manuscript", but this only works if it is "two-dimensional"). --dab (𒁳) 06:34, 10 September 2017 (UTC)